HAZLITT 

SELECTED ESSAYS 



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HAZLITT 

SELECTED ESSAYS 



EDITED BY 

GEORGE SAMPSON 



Cambridge : 

at the University Press 
1917 






^5~^/ i>2- 



PREFACE 

IN preparing this selection from Hazlitt's many essays I 
have had in view the possible needs of students in Training 
Colleges, candidates for the Board of Education's Certificate 
examination, pupils in the highest forms of schools, and even 
those general readers who may care to have certain fine prose 
pieces "extra-illustrated," as it were, by appropriate anno- 
tation. My actual teaching experience with the second of 
these groups has shown me that one can take nothing for 
granted in the students' general knowledge. I have found 
that even the simplest allusions need elucidation and the 
simplest foreign phrases translation. If therefore some of 
the notes seem unnecessary, readers should remember that 
what is unnecessary to them may be useful to others. 

The choice of essays will be found to embody a departure 
from the usual procedure in the case of Hazlitt, who is 
generally represented in students' editions by Characters of 
Shakespear's Plays. The present selection ranges through the 
whole of Hazlitt's essays from The Round Table to the 
posthumous pieces. The first four essays show him as the 
Boswell of Lamb and the candid friend of Wordsworth and 
Coleridge. The next three are an extension of this group, 
forming a pleasant parallel to Lamb's Detached Thoughts 
on Books and Reading and his delightful essays on the old 
actors. The next three show a very attractive and original 
Hazlitt — Hazlitt the enthusiastic critic or "gustator" of fine 
pictures. The last three show us Hazlitt savouring things 
of the world, rejoicing in the multitude of sporting crowds 
and in the solitude of lonely wanderings. If it be urged 
that political essays have been excluded, the answer must 
be that there is no essay of Hazlitt that is not political. 
Whether his subject be Poussin or pugilism, it is odd if he 
cannot get in a few thrusts at apostate poets and govern- 
ment tools. 



vi Preface 

The notes, I fear, will lie open to the charge of being, like 
Falstaff's waist, " out of all reasonable compass." But then 
Hazlitt is the most allusive of essayists, and to extend his 
snatches of quotation and expand his tantalising allusions 
is a pleasure as well as a duty. If the notes, beyond their 
immediate utility, tempt certain adventurers along some hinted 
paths of future reading, they will have accomplished the 
editor's chief intention. Says old Fuller in the preface to 
his History of the Worthies of England : 

I confess the subject is but dull in itself, to tell the time and place of 
men's births, and deaths, their names, with the names and number of their 
books, and therefore this bare sceleton of Time, Place, and Person, must 
be fleshed with some pleasant passages. To this intent I have purposely 
interlaced (not as meat, but as condiment) many delightful stories, that 
so the Reader if he do not arise (which I hope and desire) Religiosor or 
Doctior, with more Piety or Learning, at least he may depart yucundior 
with more pleasure and lawful delight. 

It is the first and best defence of the garrulous com- 
mentator — or at least of one such commentator's intention. 

The introduction is necessarily more than a recital of 
personal facts, for Hazlitt was the child of his time. One 
can read Lamb without caring what century he was born in ; 
but one will enjoy Hazlitt the more for knowing why his 
vigorous utterance is so often a challenge or a condemnation. 

Some of Hazlitt's books have been constantly reprinted 
since the first issue; but much of his work was overlooked 
and almost unknown until the appearance of the Collected 
Works (i2 vols., 1902-1904, Index vol. 1906), edited by 
A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover. To the notes of these 
editors I am indebted for the identification of many 
quotations. 



GEORGE SAMPSON 



Barnes 

October, 1916 



CONTENTS 
Text 

My First Acquaintance with Poets . 
On the Conversation of Authors. I 

JJ M » )> ^^ 

Of Persons One would Wish to have Seen 
On Reading Old Books . 
On Actors and Acting. I 

» » » » n . 

On a Landscape of Nicholas Poussin 
On the Pleasure of Painting. I 

n 

The Fight .... 

The Indian Jugglers 
On Going a Journey 

Notes 



PACE 

1-150 



99 
109 
126 

141 



[51-251 



INTRODUCTION 

A GENERAL SKETCH OF HAZLITT'S LIFE AND WRITINGS 

Early in the year 1778 there hved at Maidstone, in the county 

of Kent, a very excellent Dissenting minister 

and^Birtlf named WUliam Hazlitt. He represented a union 

of the three kingdoms, for he was born at Shronell, 

in Tipperary, educated at Glasgow (where Adam Smith was then 

a professor), and appointed to minister in England. The Pastor 

was about forty-one. His wife, Grace Loftus of Wisbech, nine 

years his junior, was said to have been a beauty and to have 

resembled the younger Pitt — we must reconcile the statements 

as we can. What is certain is that she was an excellent wife and 

mother. There were two surviving children, John, then nearly 

eleven, and Margaret, six-and-a-half. The little family lived in 

amity, and in such happiness as may be enjoyed by people of 

strict and lofty principle inhabiting a lax and Laodicean world. 

The times were troubled. George HI, in natural intelligence 
a very limited monarch, and in purpose largely shaped and 
directed by his very German mother, was steadily labouring to 
substitute for constitutional government in England the sort of 
personal rule we shall find compendiously described in Macaulay's 
essay on Frederic. He had been partially successful, and one 
consequence of his personal kingship was then pursuing its course. 
The war against the American colonists was nearly three years 
old, and what may be called its crucial point was reached almost 
at the very moment we are now considering; for in February 
1778 France signed a treaty with the Americans and threw her 
sea power into the scale against England. The war was popular 
in the worst sense. It was popular with the mob, who like 
to enjoy a cheap and extensive victory, and have therefore no 
objection to the bullying of a small power by a greater, when 
the greater is their own. The American war had seemed to 
promise this spectacle; and so its tragic failure had made the 
crowd both angry with disappointment and eager for reprisals. 

But there was a minority. There were some, like Burke 
and Chatham, who from the beginning of trouble had urged a 
policy of magnanimity upon a court and government to which 
magnanimity was a thing incomprehensible. The reverses had 

62 



X Introduction 

caused some wavering in this party. It was felt by many that 
there could be no drawing back after the intervention of France ; 
on the other hand it was urged that every additional moment 
of civil war made peace more remote and costly. Among the 
sincere and consistent pro-Americans was the Rev. William 
Hazlitt of Maidstone ; and to his zeal on the unpopular side we 
must doubtless attribute the disunion that presently appeared in 
his congregation. 

At this moment the little family in the Rose Yard manse 
received an addition ; for on the loth of April, 1778, into a world 
of foreign war, colonial revolution and domestic discord, was born 
a boy, William HazUtt, the future essayist, critic and revolutionist. 
Wordsworth was then eight, Scott six, Coleridge five and Lamb 
three. A day or two before Hazlitt's birth, the great Chatham, 
rewarded by his sovereign for a life of patriotic labour with the 
title "trumpet of sedition," had fallen, a dying man, on the floor 
of the House of Lords. Within a few weeks, two even greater 
than Chatham passed over — Voltaire in May, Rousseau in July. 
The old heroes were falling, but, across the Channel, new champions 
were preparing for the coming combat. Mirabeau was then 
twenty-nine, Robespierre twenty and Danton eighteen. Far 
away in his Mediterranean island, a small boy. Napoleon Buona- 
parte, aged seven, was eagerly looking forward to the military 
school whither he was to go in the following year. 

The disagreement among the congregation at the Earl Street 
Meeting House in Maidstone became acute; and 
Ame^Hca^"** to avoid Creating a schism, the Minister resigned 
his charge in 1780, and sought a new sphere of 
labour at Bandon, County Cork, in the island of his birth. Here 
he was even more unhappy, for his feelings as well as his principles 
were outraged by the ill-treatment to which American prisoners 
were subjected. The indignant Pastor called public attention to 
these outrages, and so we shall not be surprised to learn that he 
soon found it necessary to leave not merely Ireland but the 
British Islands. Across the western waters lay a refuge for 
sturdy independents. In January 1783 preliminaries of peace 
were signed, and a new republic entered the assembly of nations. 
Three months later, when the child William was a little short 
of five, the Hazlitt family set sail for America. They reached New 
York on May 26th, and proceeded on a two days' waggon journey 
to Philadelphia. 

The Pastor found no settled employment, and the family 
migrated often — from Philadelphia back to New York, thence to 
Boston, thence to Weymouth, thence to New Dorchester. The 
Pastor himself travelled further still. Over a wide area from Maine 
to Maryland he preached and lectured, contributing much to that 
spread of Unitarianism in America for which his more famous 
acquaintance Dr Priestley afterwards got most of the credit. There 
was near Weymouth a pleasant old nonagenarian named Gay, who 



Hazlitt's Life and ^Vritings xi 

had held that one ministerial charge for nearly seventy years. 
Him it was thought that Hazlitt might succeed; but the old 
gentleman clung to life and pulpit so immovably that Hazlitt 
resolved to return to England. He set sail in the October of 
1786, and arrived in December. Almost immediately the sempi- 
ternal Gay died. The Hazlitt family remained in America for 
nearly another year — till July 1787, in fact, when they left Boston 
for England, reaching it the next month. William was then 
a little over nine. 

We must be grateful to the vital obstinacy of the Rev. Ebenezer 
Gay. Had he been cut off prematurely in the early nineties the 
Hazlitts would probably have settled for life in New England, 
and William would have been the first of American essayists. 
But he would not have been the Hazlitt that we know. Hazlitt 
without the strong stimulus of European art, literature and 
politics would have been merely the pallid simulacrum of our 
Hazlitt. In the country of Jonathan Edwards he would have 
become probably a theologian, and almost certainly a meta- 
physician, unread, and perhaps unreadable, in either capacity. 
As it was, America did a little for him. It counted for something 
that the champion of popular government had spent his early im- 
pressionable years in the first of modern Republics, one of a 
family self-exiled from the iniquities of European kingdoms. 
Naturally there is little to record of the boy's life during this 
transatlantic period, though it happens that his earliest surviving 
composition is a letter, in which, at the age of nine, he reaches 
the melancholy conclusion that the discovery of America was 
a mistake, and that the country should have been left to the 
aboriginal inhabitants^. 

The first London lodging of the family was in Walworth, — 
not the sordid and swarming Walworth of to-day, 
London and ^^^ ^j^g semi-rural Walworth of Mr Wemmick. 
There, the flowers, cates and cream of the Mont- 
pelier Tea Gardens, once a Paradise of pleasure, and now utterly 
submerged beneath a dingy tide of brick, so stamped themselves 
on the boy's mind, that all his later joy in these " suburb delights " 
took their colour from the gorgeous summer hues of that first 
garden of his innocence 2. Later in the year 1787 the Pastor got 
a settled charge at Wem in Shropshire, and here for several years 
the growing boy remained, going to school, studying with his 
father, and learning French with the girls of a neighbouring family. 
These children he visited when they returned to Liverpool, and 
there he first encountered one abiding love and pleasure of his 
life — the theatre. Kemble and Dignum and Suett, players 
celebrated in many an essay later, swam like new planets into his 
astonished vision. He was then twelve or thirteen, and most of 

^ The authority for details of the American sojourn is a diary 
kept by Margaret, the essayist's sister. 

« See Table Talk, "Why Distant Objects Please." 



xii Introduction 

those few years had been passed far from the pleasures of cities. 
The Nonconformists of a century ago did not all anathematize 
the theatre. We hear of theatrical visits at Wem, and the 
reverend Pastor spoke with frequent admiration of one famous 
player — the Mrs Pritchard whom we know from Boswell. 

It seems to have been assumed that William was to follow his 
father into the ministry, and so in 1793 he was 
Theology and ^j^iy entered as a student at the Hackney Theological 
College. The curriculum there, as far as his letters 
show, was in the best sense liberal. The classics agreeably 
mitigated the austerities of theology, and Hazlitt seems to have 
been a diligent student, though he managed astutely to substitute 
some cherished speculations on the political nature of man for 
the graver feats of exegesis expected from him. But his real 
education was received outside the Hackney walls. His brother 
John, now twenty-six, was established in London as a painter 
and miniaturist. The young theologian of Hackney of course 
paid many visits to the studio in Rathbone Place, and there 
encountered not only the frank-speaking and free-thinking men 
who gather in the rooms of young painters, but visions of the 
world of art, with all its happy industry and its association with 
beauty. The hands that should have been employed in penning 
theses became busy with the brushes. It was canvas, not sermon- 
paper that the boy longed to be filling, and so a crowning dis- 
appointment was preparing for the good old man in Shropshire. 
William heard the call, not of Samuel, but of Giotto. A wistful 
passage written many years later throws some light on the per- 
turbations of this period. It is long, but it is so significant that 
it must be quoted at length : 

The greatest misfortune that can happen among relations is a 
different way of bringing up, so as to set one another's opinions and 
characters in an entirely new point of view. This often lets in an 
unwelcome day-light on the subject, and breeds schisms, coldness 
and incurable heart-burnings in families. I have sometimes thought 
whether the progress of society and march of knowledge does not do 
harm in this respect, by loosening the ties of domestic attachment, 
and preventing those who are most interested in, and anxious to think 
well of one another, from feeling a cordial sympathy and approbation 
of each other's sentiments, manners, views, &c., than it does good 
by any real advantage to the community at large. The son, for 
instance, is brought up to the church, and nothing can exceed the 
pride and pleasure the father takes in him, while all goes on well in 
this favourite direction. His notions change, and he imbibes a taste 
for the Fine Arts. From this moment there is an end of anything 
like the same unreserved communication between them. The young 
man may talk with enthusiasm of his " Rembrandts, Correggios, and 
stuff": it is all Hebrew to the elder ; and whatever satisfaction he may 
feel in hearing of his son's progress, or good wishes for his success, 
he is never reconciled to the new pursuit, he still hankers after the 
first object that he had set his mind upon. Again, the grandfather 



Hazlitt's Life and \A^ntings xiii 

is a Calvinist, who never gets the better of his disappointment at his 
son's going over to the Unitarian side of the question. The matter 
rests here, till the grandson, some years after, in the fashion of the 
day and "infinite agitation of men's wit," comes to doubt certain 
points in the creed in which he has been brought up, and the affair 
is all abroad again. Here are three generations made uncomfortable 
and in a manner set at variance, by a veering point of theology, and 
the officious meddling biblical critics ! (Table Talk, " On the Knowledge 
of Character.) 

A year after his entry into the Hackney College, Hazlitt 
turned his back for ever upon ministry and theology, 
Se«iinE%ime ^^'^ retired to Wem, where he passed the next few 
years, ostensibly doing nothing, but actually busy 
with reading, painting, walking, brooding and struggling to express 
himself in words. A volume entitled An Essay on the Principles 
of Human Action, etc. (published in 1805) occupied his busy mind 
and tasked his unready pen; but he had the infinite leisure of 
youth, and his slow progress troubled him little. It is of this and 
the succeeding period that he writes in the following passage : 

For many years of my life I did nothing but think. I had nothing 
else to do but solve some knotty point, or dip in some abstruse author, 
or look at the sky, or wander by the pebbled sea-side — • 
To see the children sporting on the shore. 
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 
I cared for nothing, I wanted nothing. I took my time to consider 
whatever occurred to me, and was in no hurry to give a sophistical 
answer to a question — there was no printer's devil waiting for me. 
I used to write a page or two perhaps in half a year ; and remember 
laughing heartily at the celebrated experimentalist Nicholson, who told 
me that in twenty years he had written as much as would make three 
hundred octavo volumes. If I was not a great author, I could read 
with ever fresh delight, "never ending, still beginning," and had no 
occasion to write a criticism when I had done. If I could not paint 
like Claude, I could admire "the witcherj- of the soft blue sky" as 
I walked out, and was satisfied with the pleasure it gave me. If I 
was dull, it gave me little concern : if I was lively, I indulged my 
spirits. I wished well to the world, and believed as favourably of it 
as I could. I was like a stranger in a foreign land, at which I looked 
with wonder, curiosity and delight, without expecting to be an object 
of attention in return. I had no relation to the state, no duty to 
perform, no ties to bind me to others : I had neither friend nor mistress, 
wife or child. I lived in a world of contemplation, and not of action. 
{Table Talk, "On Living to Oneself.") 

There were epochs in his young life marked by the days of 
delight when he first discovered certain treasures of great literature 
— the sentiment of Rousseau, the grandeur of Burke, the majesty 
of Milton. A sort of furious intensity characterised all he did 
from the days of childhood, when he fell ill through the excited 
exhaustion of his first studies in Latin, to the later time of manhood, 
when he drenched his body \vith the energy of his racquet- playing, 



xiv Introduction 

and inflamed his mind with the fierceness of his pohtical 
fervour. Few men have hated so vigorously ; few have enjoyed 
so gloriously ; and for his much love much will be forgiven him. 
As the man, so the youth; and we discern him dimly in these 
days of adolescence, hot with pent-up and unknown powers, 
eager, yet baffled and inarticulate, lonely, yet happy with books 
and brushes, out of sympathy with his excellent father, and think- 
ing himself steadily into a belief that he had a gift for philosophy. 
There arc many melancholy and companionless youths who 
cherish the same delusion. Cheerfulness comes breaking in with 
the responsibilities of manhood. Meanwhile, in the great world 
beyond Wem, a new generation was springing up. In 1798, 
Hazlitt's wonder-year, when he himself was twenty, Byron was 
ten, Shelley six and Keats three. 

And now there came to Hazlitt the revelation that opened his 
heart and mind and taught him to know himself. 
His First In 1798 he met Coleridge. The ever delightful 

wu'h'poetT'^^ essay in which he describes this meeting stands 
first in the present volume and makes any further 
account worse than unnecessary. The many who date an epoch 
in their own lives from a first reading of Biographia and Lyrical 
Ballads will always feel a peculiar affection for this essay, 
which wonderfully recaptures the thrill of youth, and mingles 
with its rapture so much mature and humorous wisdom. From 
the extent of our own vast debt to the mere printed pages of 
poetry and criticism we can measure the ecstasy with which 
young Hazlitt made his first acquaintance with poets and drank 
in the utterances of their own living lips. With the boy in 
Comus he could say: 

How charming is divine philosophy! 

Not harsh, and crabbed as dull fools suppose, 

But musical as is Apollo's lute. 

And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets 

Where no crude surfeit reigns. 
It is Coleridge who is the hero of the story, as he always will be 
to ardent youth, — Coleridge " in the dayspring of his fancies with 
hope like a fier^^ pillar before him." At that date it was gloriously 
apparent that the head of Coleridge was in the heavens ; it was 
less obvious that his feet were in the mire of a road down to 
ignoble sloth and moral suicide. Coleridge was still Mirandola, 
not yet Micawber. Wordsworth is less attractive to the youthful 
mind. He seems gaunt, frigid and set, as if he had never been 
young. We have to turn often to those dehghtful early books 
of The Prelude to remind ourselves of Wordsworth's fiery, volcanic, 
youth. 

To Hazlitt the wisdom of these poets had the weight of those 

few years' seniority that mean so much to the boy 

pLris'^^^ ^""^ °^ twenty. He kindled his zeal anew at the altar 

fire of their genius. He felt that he must do some- 



Hazlitt's Life and Writings xv 

thing instantly. The talk of Coleridge turned his mind again 
towards philosophy, and made that unfinished and apparently 
interminable Essay on the Principles of Human Action a reproach 
to him. This he began anew, though as a sort of parergon, for 
he now solemnly chose painting, and especially portraiture, as 
his life work. He went to his brother in London where, in the 
same palpitating year, a new revelation awaited him, — the glory 
of great art made manifest in the Titians, Rembrandts, Rubens 
and Vandycks of the Orleans collection then on exhibition in Pall 
Mall and the Lyceum. More than ever inflamed, he tramped the 
country, to paint if he could, and certainly to see the pictures 
in great collections. Startled flunkeys tried in vain to check 
the excited young man who would insist on penetrating to the 
picture galleries of noble connoisseurs. Hazlitt wanted to see 
pictures, and, in his own wild way, almost fought to see them. 
So impressive was he in this artistic phase, that one trusting 
merchant in Liverpool was moved to offer him a hundred guineas 
for copies of certain pictures in the Louvre. It is scarcely 
necessaiy to say that he accepted. To Hazlitt Paris was simply 
Paradise writ small. Everything was propitious. The year was 
1802 and Paris was at its greatest. The first phase of the war 
had been concluded by the Peace of Amiens. France was enjoying 
the only real emotions of tranquillity she had known since the 
first blows had fallen on the gates of the Bastille. There was an 
air of liberty new-gained yet well-established. Napoleon had just 
been declared First Consul for life and the Louvre was overflowing 
with the spoils of his Italian triumph. The city was crowded with 
visitors. English ladies and gentlemen flocked eagerly to see the 
land and people they had been tenacious in fighting, and listened, in 
Court and Salon, to stories of the Revolution related by Marshals 
of France who had been poor citizens or private soldiers at the 
time of the great upheaval. 

In Paris, then, from October 1802 to January 1803, Hazlitt 
lived and worked, poor, cold and hungry, but intensely happy. 
He did not see Napoleon, nor did he penetrate to the distinguished 
circles of rank and fashion ; but he breathed the charged electrical 
atmosphere, and rejoiced. He returned to England duly certified 
as the copyist of some ten or dozen pictures specified in a document 
sigTied by M. le Directeur General du Musee Central des Arts, and 
epically dated "le 12 Pluviose, an 11." It was at this time that 
he made the acquaintance of one who was to prove his truest 
friend, one who spoke well of him when many spoke ill, who 
helped him in material need, and closed his eyes when peace 
came at last to his tempestuous spirit. There were many to 
whom Charles Lamb in various ways did good; there were few 
to whom his genial and wholesome influence was more beneficial 
than to Hazlitt ; and Hazlitt knew it. Sometime friends of our 
author are often enough pilloried, not to say crucified, in his 
vengeful paragraphs; but it is impossible to read his references 



xvi Introduction 

to Lamb without discerning unaltered admiration and something 
like affection. Hazlitt became one of the intimates who met at 
Lamb's weekly gatherings. He quarrelled, in time, with all of 
them, even with Lamb himself, though in this instance the 
enmity was neither long nor bitter. Like most shy and over- 
sensitive natures, Hazlitt was easily irritated, and much that was 
thought ill-temper was often no more than anger with himself 
for his own lack of social ease and smoothness. Moreover, there 
would sometimes arise in discussion, as we shall see, questions of 
principle about which he could make no compromise. Extremes 
meet. During the great eruption, both Burke and Hazlitt became 
socially explosive and impossible, the one with detestation for the 
Revolution, the other with admiration for it. 

The business of portrait painting cannot be said to have 
prospered. What Hazlitt could do in this line 
PalntTn"*" ^^7 ^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ familiar portrait of Lamb 
am ing attired as a Venetian senator, now in the National 

Portrait Gallery and frequently reproduced as a frontispiece. 
Hazlitt was probably as anxious to make it like a Titian as like 
Lamb. The mouth and chin resemble the strong profile of 
Hancock's drawing, but the whole picture is rather inexpressive 
and might be anyone but Elia. With Wordsworth and Coleridge 
he was even less successful. Of the Coleridge Southey writes, 
"you look as if you were on your trial, and had certainly stolen 
the horse; but then you did it cleverly." The Wordsworth was 
described as "at the gallows, deeply affected by his deserved 
fate, yet determined to die like a man." The portrait of his 
father, into the painting of which went so many happy hours — 
hours of reconciliation, no doubt — gained the distinction of a 
place in the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1806. It is pleasantly 
mentioned in the first essay on The Pleasure of Painting, and in 
a later piece, On Sitting for One's Picture {Plain Speaker). The 
Museum at Maidstone has four of his portraits and copies. The 
horrible medium he used for his colour has so blackened with age 
that the pictures are almost buried and might as well not exist. 
As time went on, Hazlitt began reluctantly to realise that painting 
was not his real work. Titian or Rembrandt he could not be, and 
less he disdained to be. But his labour had not been wasted. 
Painting cultivated in him the seeing eye, and made him one of 
the soundest among our early writers on art. Sir Joshua taught 
in his Discourses the principles that he happily forgot in his 
studio. Hazlitt did not write like a painter; he painted like 
a critic. He enjoyed certain pictures immensely, and his enjoy- 
ment was the begetter both of his copies and his criticisms. There 
are no sublimities of rapture or flights of virtuosity in his writings 
on art. To him a portrait by Titian was neither a moral tract 
nor a study in values; it was something to be relished, like a 
novel by Scott or a comedy by Vanbrugh or a good meal at an 
inn after a long day's march. He liked pictures in a hearty 



Hazlitt's Life and Writings xvii 

cheerful fashion and his readers catch the wholesome infection. 
As for himself, his painting gave him, if not a livelihood, at least 
a lively joy which he never forgot. It was twenty years after 
his early painting days that he wrote this passage : 

Yet I dream sometimes ; I dream of the Louvre — Intus et in cute. 
I dreamt I was there a few weeks ago, and that the old scene returned 
— that I looked for my favourite pictures, and found them gone or 
erased. The dream of my youth came upon me ; a glory and a vision 
unutterable, that comes no more but in darkness and in sleep : my 
heart rose up, and I fell on my knees, and lifted up my voice and wept, 
and I awoke. {Plain Speaker, "On Dreams.") 

The prevailing interest in the Lamb circle was literature. 

Moving among authors, Hazlitt naturally became 
Beginnings of eager to turn certain written words of his own into 
ip print. He managed to persuade some hopeful 

bookseller to publish that perennial Essay on the Principles of 
Htiman Action in 1805, and he issued next year, apparently at 
his own risk, a pamphlet, now very rare, entitled Free Thoughts 
on Public Affairs. It is difficult to prove that anyone bought a 
copy of either; but at least he had appeared as a real printed 
author, and went on cheerfully to perform two pieces of hack 
work, the first an abridgement into one volume of the original 
seven occupied by The Light of Nature Pursued, a leisurely philo- 
sophical miscellany written by Abraham Tucker; the second a 
compilation called The Eloquence of the British Senate, exhibiting 
the oratory of famous statesmen in specimens and their lives in 
brief biographical sketches. With characteristic economy Hazlitt 
used certain of these sketches again in later works. One, indeed, 
the acidulated Character of Pitt, crops up with unfailing regularity 
in so many volumes as almost to baffle enumeration. These two 
works appeared in 1807, the year that saw also the publication of 
Hazlitt's Reply to Malthus, the clergyman who had issued in 1798 
a gloomy prognostication of human lot, based on the fact, clear 
to him, that population was increasing in geometrical progression, 
while subsistence was increasing only at the comparatively 
beggarly arithmetical rate. The emphatic style of the preface to 
Tucker and the bold, penetrating criticism of the Malthusian 
theories indicate the coming of the real Hazlitt, whose pen was 
thereafter busy for many years in many papers. Nothing came 
amiss to him, from parliamentary reporting to operatic criticism. 
He became, in fact, a professional man of letters, and was to 
experience very fully the intermittent joys and the unfailing 
chagrins of that precarious calling. 

Soon after his debut as an author, Hazlitt married. In his 

early London days he had made the acquaintance 
Mardag^es °^ John Stoddart, an ardent Revolutionist who, 

like certain others, lived to abjure his first principles 
and to become a stiff champion of Legitimate Monarchy. A 
knighthood and a colonial judgeship were his reward. Stoddart's 



xviii Introduction 

sister Sarah had a small property at Winterslow on the road from 
Andover to Salisbury across the Plain. At the age of thirty-three 
she combined a strong inclination for matrimony in the abstract 
with an almost complete indifference to any bridegroom in 
particular. From the letters of Mary Lamb we hear of several 
suitors, but in the end Hazlitt was the lucky (or unlucky) man. 
Sarah was older than Hazlitt who, with Shakespeare's example 
and precepts before him, should have known better. The wooing 
was short, and the ceremony was performed on Mayday in 1808 
at St Andrew's, Holborn. The rest of the matrimonial story had 
better be told at once, and then dismissed. Hazlitt married in 
haste and repented at leisure. The two were quite unsuited to 
each other. The lady found marriage in the concrete with an 
untidy and all-pervading man much less agreeable than marriage 
in the contemplative with an abstract idea of husband. She had 
no domestic gifts, and no sense of her deficiency. Hazlitt's own 
eager preoccupation with writing and painting as things-in-them- 
selves added nothing to the household harmony and very little to 
the household economy. There seems to have been no violent 
disagreement," — nothing but a steady growth of antipathy. By 
1819 they were living apart. There was no Divorce Court in 
England till 1857; but in Scotland, dissentient parties could 
be separated almost as expeditiously as eloping couples were 
united. To Scotland, therefore, came the inharmonious but still 
friendly pair, and there in 1823 they were divorced. Hazlitt 
ventured matrimony a second time. He was too hasty to be 
warned in the first case by Shakespeare, and a dozen years too 
early to be warned in the second by Mr Weller. He married 
a widow, Mrs Bridgwater, in 1824, and spent a leisurely honeymoon 
in travelling through France, Switzerland and Italy, combining 
business with pleasure by recording his impressions in some very 
readable sketches contributed to The Morning Chronicle in 1824, 
and collected as a volume in 1826. This second marriage was of 
very doubtful validity in England. Whether this weighed on 
the conscience of the second Mrs Hazlitt, or whether the position 
of being married to a man whose first wife was still living and 
quite friendly with him was too embarrassing for her, we do not 
know; but in any case the union was brief. The lady's first 
husband had held the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, and she appears, 
by the fleeting testimony of Haydon and Leigh Hunt, to have 
been a woman of much personal dignity, with whom Hazlitt 
would have to mend his rather Bohemian (not to say Boeotian) 
habits. The usual story of their final separation in Switzerland 
at the end of the honeymoon must be received with caution. We 
do not really know how, when, or where they parted. The second 
Mrs Hazlitt disappears from the story as mysteriously as she 
enters it. 

One other kindred incident may have its necessary mention in 
this place. In 1820 Hazhtt went to live (apart from his first 



Hazlitt's Life and Letters xix 

wife) in. Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, where a cer- 
tain Mr and Mrs Walker had lodgings to let. Here he became 
infatuated with their daughter Sarah, and devoted a disagreeable 
book, half dialogue, half correspondence, to the incident. 

Now revert. This digression into the backwaters of matrimony 
left the main stream of Hazlitt's story in the first 
Wintersiow proud days of authorship. Almost the sole benefit 
he derived from his union with Sarah Stoddart was 
the discovery of Wintersiow. Thither he went after his marriage ; 
and when in later years he wanted a lodge in the wilderness, it 
was to Wintersiow that he turned — not then, of course, to the 
"small property" of Sarah Stoddart, but to the Pheasant Inn or 
Wintersiow Hut as it is more generally known to us. Here much 
of his best work was written and many of his happiest hours were 
spent. A passage from one essay may be quoted as an illustration 
of what may be called his Wintersiow frame of mind : 

If the reader is not already apprised of it, he will please to take 
notice that I write this at Wintersiow. My style there is apt to be 
redundant and excursive. At other times it may be cramped, dry, 
abrupt; but here it flows like a river and overspreads its banks. I have 
not to seek for thoughts or hunt for images : they come of themselves, 
I inhale them with the breeze, and the silent groves are voqal with a 
thousand recollections — 

And visions, as poetic eyes avow. 
Hang on each leaf and cling to every bough. 
Here I came fifteen years ago, a willing exile ; and as I trod the 
lengthened greensward by the low wood-side, repeated the old line, 

My mind to me a kingdom is ! 
I found it so then, before, and since ; and shall I faint, now that I 
have poured out the spirit of that mind to the world, and treated 
many subjects with truth, with freedom, and power, because I have 
been followed with one cry of abuse ever since /or not being a government- 
tool}.... 

I look out of my window and see that a shower has just fallen : 
the fields look green after it, and a rosy cloud hangs over the brow of 
the hill ; a lily expands its petals in the moisture, dressed in its lovely 
green and white ; a shepherd boy has just brought some pieces of turf 
with daisies and grass for his mistress to make a bed for her sky-lark, 
not doomed to dip his wings in the dappled dawn — my cloudy thoughts 
draw off, the storm of angry politics has blown over — Mr Blackwood, 
I am yours — Mr Croker, my service to you — Mr T. Moore, I am alive 
and well — Really, it is wonderful how little the worse I am for fifteen 
years' wear and tear, how I come upon my legs again on the ground 
of truth and nature, and "look abroad into universality," forgetting 
that there is any such person as myself in the world. (Plain Speaker, 
"Whether Genius is conscious of its Powers.") 

The allusions in this passage lead us naturally to some con- 
sideration of Hazlitt's political principles and the 
Haziitt and bitter antagonism in which they involved him. 
Revolution Hazhtt was in a special sense the child of Revolution. 



XX Introduction 

He was cradled in strife, and passed his earliest years in the 
new transatlantic Republic. He was eleven when the Bastille 
fell, and began his career at Hackney College in the year of 
the Terror. Coleridge and Wordsworth, the poetical apostles of 
Revolution, first taught him to know himself, and so confirmed 
him in his liberal faith that he went to the First Consul's capital 
as ardent for France and freedom as any Frenchman of them all. 
Even his career of authorship began with a baptism of fire, for 
upon his first visible publications shone "the sun of Austerlitz." 
The tragedy of Hazlitt is that in a changing world, a world of 
honest conversion and of profitable recantation, he kept his first 
principles fiercely unaltered. And really, seen from the angle of 
the present time, those principles are nothing terrible. Let us 
endeavour to view the whole matter as he saw it. 

The picturesque reading of young people seems to create in 
thein an impression that the French Revolution and the Reign of 
Terror are the same thing. To such readers the French Revolution 
is little more than the continuous decapitation of elegant aristocrats 
amid howls of execration from a stage mob of tricoteuses and sans- 
culottes. In the unhappy history of mankind there have been 
many reigns of terror with no compensatoiy revolutions; if the 
ten months of Terror could be blotted out from French history, 
the great achievements of the Revolution would remain unaltered. 
The immediate beginning of that great upheaval was an attempt 
to erect a workable constitution in the place of a centralised 
autocracy that had hopelessly broken down. That the con- 
stitutionalists were able to extort submission from what had 
seemed the most impregnable monarchy of Europe was hailed by 
all free spirits as a triumph of liberty. The subsequent troubles 
had their rise in the secret treachery of the French Court, and 
especially its collusion with the armies of Prussia and Austria, 
which presumed to dictate to France whether or not she should 
reform her government. In July 1791 Austria summoned the 
princes of Europe to unite against the Revolution. Hostile 
German troops, aided both secretly and openly by the Court and 
nobles, threatened the frontiers. The September massacres of 
1792 were the answer of France to a German invasion; and 
henceforward slaughter in the name of War or in the name of 
Justice was to be the history of some terrible years. Hazlitt 
puts the matter briefly: 

It has been usual (as men remember their prejudices better than 
the truth) to hold up the Coahtion of the Allied Powers as having 
for its end and justification the repressing the horrors of the French 
Revolution; whereas, on the contrary, those horrors arose out of the 
Coalition, which had for its object to root out not the evil, but the 
good of the Revolution in France. (Life of Napoleon, Chapter v.) 

To Hazlitt the struggle from first to last and in every phase 
was simply the struggle of Freedom against Tyranny : 



Hazlitt's Life and W^ritings xxi 

Let all the wrongs public and private produced in France by 
arbitrary power and exclusive privileges for a thousand years be 
collected in a volume, and let this volume be read by all who have 
hearts to feel or capacity to understand, and the strong, stifling sense 
of oppression and kindling burst of indignation that would follow 
would be that impulse of public action that led to the French Revolu- 
tion. Let all the victims that have perished under the mild, paternal 
sway of the ancient regime, in dungeons, and in agony, without a 
trial, without an accusation, without witnesses, be assembled together, 
and their chains struck off, and the shout of jubilee and exultation 
they would make, or that nature would make at the sight, will be the 
shout that was heard when the Bastille fell! The dead pause that 
ensued among the gods of the earth, the rankling malice, the panic- 
fear, when they saw law and justice raised to an equahty with their 
sovereign will, and mankind no longer doomed to be their sport, was 
that of fiends robbed of their prey : their struggles, their arts, their 
unyielding perseverance, and their final triumph was that of fiends 
when it is restored to them. {Life of Napoleon, Chap, iii.) 

That the continental despots, ruHng by Right Divine over 
minions of subjects bound to the soil in a state 
Uie^evoiution indistinguishable from slavery, should have viewed 
with alarm the abatement of royal and noble 
prerogative in France was entirely explicable ; but there was one 
country that might have been expected to sympathise with the 
Revolution — the country in which serfdom had long ago dis- 
appeared, in which abuse of royal privilege had led to a civil war 
and the execution of a Idng, and in which a drastic revolution had 
driven one ruler from the throne, diverted the succession to a 
foreign line, and bound all kings to come within the strictest 
confines of constitutional procedure. That sympathy was not 
withheld. The brightest spirits in England rejoiced at the down- 
fall of autocracy in France. Some, indeed, were more revolu- 
tionary than the Revolutionists themselves. Coleridge and 
Southey, exalted to the heights of youthful enthusiasm, proposed 
to emigrate and found a Pantisocracy or Hyper-Utopia on the 
banks of the Susquehanna. 

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. 
But to be young was very Heaven ! 

In all this "pleasant exercise of hope and joy," Hazlitt came to 
share. Younger than the poets he admired, he beheved in them 
as ferventiy as in the Revolution. But "universal England" 
was not with them. One mighty voice had been lifted from the 
first against the new regime. Burke, who had stood for liberty 
in America and justice in India, now appeared as the champion 
of tyranny in France. Prematurely aged by a life of struggle 
and ill-success, he had declined to the state of political pedantry 
that resists any change if it is made in some other than a pre- 
scribed way, and presentiy comes to resist all change merely 



xxii Introduction 

because it is change. Burke in his latest phase seems to be one 
of those described by Hazlitt as 

a set of men existing at all times, who never can arrive at a conception 
beyond the still-life of politics, and in the most critical circumstances 
and in the convulsion and agony of states, see only the violation of 
forms and etiquette. {Life of Napoleon, Chap, v.) 

Burke found many willing hearers. It is a sufficient comment 
upon the tendency of his Reflections that they were admired 
equally in the Court of England and the Court of Russia. England 
had changed. What France was rejecting, England was accepting. 
The French Revolution came in the midst of George Ill's attempt 
to re-erect a royal autocracy upon the ruins of parliamentary 
government. Thirty years of his personal rule had reduced 
political life in England to a degraded level of corruption and 
incompetence. An England governed by servile and venal 
"King's Friends" could have no sympathy with a Revolution. 
A young Englishman, travelling in 1792 with the German forces 
gathering to crush France, had formulated a plan for the govern- 
ment of that country. Its first and chief point was that "the 
authority of the king should be perfectly re-established, and that 
any liberty the people may afterwards possess should be con- 
sidered as his indulgence^." It is difficult to understand the 
frame of mind that could ever have held in modern times this 
view of liberty and government ; it is stUl more incredible that 
such a proposal should date from the summer of 1792 when the 
immediate result of the Duke of Brunswick's atrocious manifesto 
against the French had been the imprisonment of Louis XVI in 
the Temple. It is worth noting that the young English gentleman 
who took this enlightened view of national liberty and royal 
indulgence was the person who, as Lord Liverpool, held office 
here as Prime Minister from 181 2 to 1827. 

Elated by unexpected success against the German invaders, 
France became aggressive, and held that those who 
tinentarwar were not with her were against her. War with 
England began in 1793 and lasted with few inter- 
missions for twenty-two years. The continental powers wavered ; 
sometimes they were leagued against France, sometimes leagued 
with her; but England remained steadfastly Anti-Gallican from 
1793 to 1 8 15. Her pretexts for that long animosity changed 
from time to time, but her undeclared and unwavering purpose 
never changed; and that purpose was the suppression of any- 
thing like popular government, and the re-establishment of 
unlimited monarchy. She warred not so much to suppress 
revolutionary principles in France as to suppress revolutionary 
principles in England. The events in France had filled the 

1 Lord Granville Leveson Gower, Private Correspondence, 1781-1821 
Vol. I, p. 49 (1916). 



Hazlitt's Life and Writings xxiii 

governing classes of England with panic. The excesses of the 
Revolution there were made the excuse for excesses of repression 
here. Men of honourable record were transported for advocating 
the measures of Parliamentary reform that had shortly before 
been favoured by Pitt himself; and writers of liberal tendencies 
were shadowed by spies and dragged before the courts upon 
ridiculous charges of treason. Hazlitt in his impressionable 
youth had met some of the sufferers. Hatred of Pitt was 
inhaled with his every breath. Coleridge, whom he revered, had 
written thus of the detested minister: 

Yon dark Scowler view, 

Who with proud words of dear-loved Freedom came — 
More blasting than the mildew from the South ! 
And kissed his country with Iscariot mouth 

Ah ! foul apostate from his Father's fame ! 

Wordsworth's later confession records the horror he felt when 
England joined in the hunt against FraJice: 

What, then, were my emotions, when in arms 

Britain put forth her freeborn strength in league, 

Oh, pity and shame ! with those confederate Powers ! 

Not in my single self alone I found. 

But in the minds of all ingenuous youth. 

Change and subversion from that hour. No shock 

Given to my moral nature had I known 

Down to that very moment; neither lapse 

Nor turn of sentiment that might be named 

A revolution, save at this one time ; 

All else was progress on the self-same path 

On which, with a diversity of pace, 

I had been travelling: this a stride at once 

Into another region. As a light 

And pliant harebell, swinging in the breeze 

On some grey rock — its birthplace— so had I 

Wantoned, fast rooted on the ancient tower 

Of my beloved country, wishing not 

A happier fortune than to wither there : 

Now was I from that pleasant station torn 

And tossed about in whirlwind. I rejoiced, 

Yes, afterwards — truth most painful to record ! 

Exulted, in the triumph of my soul. 

When Englishmen by thousands were o'erthrown, 

Left without glory on the field, or driven. 

Brave hearts! to shameful flight. (Prelude, Bk x.) 

Sentiments even remotely resembling these the Government were 
determined to suppress. The task was easy, for they were the 
sentiments of a rapidly dwindling minority. It is always possible 
to scare the "mutable many" by assuring them that they will 
lose the privileges they do not possess. That well-tried plan 
succeeded thoroughly in 1793. The people of England, who had 



xxiv Introduction 

no Parliamentary representation, and, under Pitt's recent statutes, 
next to no liberties, were assured that the French would rob them 
of their rights and liberties ; and so they fought tremendously. 

When the needs of France produced the Man of Destiny 
Na 1 on *^^ purpose of England was strengthened. That 

apo eon France should make a Revolution was bad enough ; 

that she should make an Emperor was worse. England became 
the champion of Legitimacy; and just as France, a century 
earlier, had warred half-heartedly to force the Stewarts back upon 
England, so England fought with superb and memorable tenacity 
to force the Bourbons back upon France. That, really, is the 
story of the war. 

Napoleon was our great enemy for many years, yet in such 
a way that we have now almost forgotten the enmity and re- 
member only the greatness. Seen in contrast to the aims and 
ideals of the monarchs who combined to crush him, he was a 
beneficent influence in Europe. There was more real personal 
and political liberty, more good and sane administration in the 
France of Napoleon, than in all the rest of Europe put together. 
An appalling count can be drawn against him ; but like Elizabeth 
or Henry VIII or any other great sinner of history, Napoleon is 
entitled to be judged by the balance of his career ; and no one now 
disputes that this balance is on the side of good. In the great and 
ever-changing world of political doctrine, it is presumptuous for 
anyone to say that this is right or that is wrong ; but if we believe 
that the general course of man for the last hundred years has been 
wholesomely progressive, we have to admit that, in opposing 
France, we were opposing the ideals we now call right. Hazlitt 
had no doubt of it. 

The rest of the story is significant. After the triumph of 
England and the extinction of Napoleon, night settled down 
upon Europe. It became evident that the liberty which had 
triumphed at Waterloo was not the liberty of peoples but 
the liberty of absolute monarchs. For a short time Europe 
endured the burden of this new-found freedom, and then began 
to stir uneasily. The three days' revolution of 1830 was the 
answer of France to the liberty imposed upon it by the infantry 
of Wellington and the hussars of Bliicher. In England the 
struggles for the Reform Bill acted as a safety-valve of popular 
discontent; but the states of Central Europe, more used to 
unenlightened despotism, endured to 1848 before they exploded 
in revolt. Italy had to wait for half a century before the unity 
given it by Napoleon was again restored. 

Napoleon ! 'twas a high name lifted high ; 

It met at last God's thunder sent to clear 

Our compassing and covering atmosphere, 

And open a clear sight, beyond the sky, 

Of supreme empire: this of earth's was done — 

And kings crept out again to feel the sun. 



Hazlitt's Life and ^Vntings xxv 

The kings crept out — the peoples sate at home, — 

And finding the long invocated peace 

A pall embroidered with worn images 

Of rights divine, too scant to cover doom 

Such as they suffered, — cursed the corn that grew 

Rankly, to bitter bread, on Waterloo. 

A deep gloom centred in the deep repose — 
The nations stood up mute to count their dead — 
And he who owned the Name which vibrated 
Through silence, — trusting to his noblest foes. 
When earth was all too gray for chivalry — 
Died of their mercies, 'mid the desert sea. 

The words are Mrs Browning's ; the sentiments are Hazlitt's. 

He grudged France her hero. He thought that 
Napofeo^n"'^ inferior nation did not deserve so great a man. 

What he really wanted was an English Napoleon 
who should cleanse and purify Britain as the Emperor had 
cleansed and purified France. To him Napoleon was not a 
tyrant, but a liberator, who had to conquer Europe because 
Europe's kings had conspired to conquer France. The Napoleon 
whom Hazlitt admired was the Napoleon to whom Beethoven 
had first dedicated his Eroica Symphony. He was the symbol 
of the French Revolution, the embodiment of a principle that 
Hazlitt, as an Englishman and the inheritor of the English 
Revolution, held as dear as life, the principle that there is no 
Divine Right of reigning inherent in any special family, and that 
peoples, therefore, may choose their own form of government. 
Thus he writes: 

I have nowhere in anything I may have written declared myself 
to be a Republican ; nor should I think it worth while to be a martyr 
and a confessor to any form or mode of government. But what I 
have staked health and wealth, name and fame upon, and am ready 
to do so again and to the last gasp, is this, that there is a power in 
the people to change its government and its governors. That is, 
I am a Revolutionist: for otherwise, I must allow that mankind are 
but a herd of slaves, the property of thrones, that no tyranny or insult 
can lawfully goad them to a resistance to a particular family. {Life 
of Napoleon, Chap, xxxiv.) 

A fuller confession of his faith appears in another place in the 
same work: 

Of my object in writing the Life here offered to the public, and of 
the general tone that pervades it, it may be proper that I should 
render some account (before proceeding farther) in order to prevent 
mistakes and false applications. It is true, I admired the man ; but 
what chiefly attached me to him, was his being, as he had been long 
ago designated, "the child and champion of the Revolution." Of this 
character he could not divest himself, even though he wished it. He 
was nothing, he could be nothing, but what he owed to himself and to 
his triumphs over those who claimed mankind as their inheritance 



xxvi Introduction 

by a divine right ; and as long as he was a thorn in the side of kings 
and kept them at bay, his cause rose out of the ruins and defeat of 
their pride and hopes of revenge. He stood (and he alone stood) 
between them and their natural prey. He kept off that last indignity 
and wrong offered to a whole people (and through them to the rest 
of the world) of being handed over, like a herd of cattle, to a particular 
family, and chained to the foot of a legitimate throne. This was the 
chief point at issue — this was the great question, compared with which 
all others were tame and insignificant — Whether mankind were, from 
the beginning to the end of time, born slaves or not? As long as he 
remained, his acts, his very existence, gave a proud and full answer 
to this question. As long as he interposed a barrier, a gauntlet, and 
an arm of steel between us and them who alone could set up the plea 
of old, indefeasible right over us, no increase of power could be too 
great that tended to shatter this claim to pieces : even his abuse of 
power and aping the style and title of the imaginary gods of the earth 
only laughed their pretensions the more to scorn. He did many 
things wrong and foolish ; but they were individual acts, and recoiled 
upon the head of the doer. They stood upon the ground of their own 
merits, and could not urge in their vindication "the right divine of 
kings to govern wrong"; they were not precedents; they were not 
exempt from public censure or opinion ; they were not softened by 
prescription, nor screened by prejudice, nor sanctioned by super- 
stition, nor rendered formidable by a principle that imposed them as 
sacred obligations on all future generations : either they were state- 
necessities extorted by the circumstances of the time, or violent acts 
of the will, that carried their own condemnation in their bosom. What- 
ever fault might be found with them, they did not proceed upon the 
avowed principle, that "millions are made for one," but one for millions ; 
and as long as this distinction was kept in view, liberty was saved, 
and the Revolution was untouched ; for it was to establish it that 
the Revolution was commenced, and to overturn it that the enemies 
of liberty waded through seas of blood and at last succeeded. {Life 
of Napoleon, Chap, xxxi.) 

If Hazlitt seems to protest too much, let us recall our incipient 
Prime Minister of 1792 quoted earlier, and his plan for the govern- 
ment of I^rance : " the first point is that the authority of the king 
should be perfectly re-established, and that any liberty the people 
may afterwards possess should be considered as his indulgence." 

All these things are as Hazlitt saw them. We may differ 
from him as we please, but we must understand his point of view 
if we are going to read him intelligently. On the whole, however, 
his beliefs are just the beliefs of the average Briton to-day. 
Hazlitt was the first of our now many Napoleonists. If he could 
return to this present world he might exhibit the utmost extreme 
of his enthusiasm without the least singularity. He would see 
Englishmen thronging with reverence to the shrine at the Invalides 
and averting their eyes with shame from the spectacle of St Helena. 
Hazlitt who set so much store by his "little image" of Napoleon 
would find the Emperor's portrait a popular picture in the most 
British of households. He would have to read ravenously to 



Hazlitt's Life and Writings xxvii 

keep abreast of the Napoleonic literature written, translated and 
published in these islands. Hazlitt was cold to French tragedy 
but he would unbend to L'Aiglon of Edmond Rostand. The 
enthusiastic lover of Scott might care little for the Wessex novels 
of Thomas Hardy, but he would certainly rejoice in The Dynasts. 
These are agreeable speculations. The dull fact is that Hazlitt 

held his views when they were highly unpopular and 
Mundu""*'"^ savoured of treason. And he held them the more 

tenaciously the more they were challenged. He 
began to stand alone. The glorious visions of his youth faded. 
The Revolution instead of being the beginning of a new life, 
seemed no more than the end of an old song. His friends, some 
revered almost to adoration, crept over to the popular and profit- 
able side. The time was gone when 

Coleridge and Southey, Lloyd and Lamb and Co. 
All tuned their mystic harps to praise Lepaux. 

Wordsworth and Coleridge, once apostles, became apostates, and 
Hazlitt hated them, not only for what they were, but for what 
they had been. "Into what pit thou seest from what height 
fall'n." Wordsworth, in his view, had been bought by the 
Government, and had left the cause for the handful of silver he 
received as Distributor of Stamps. Southey, the Pantisocrat 
and eulogist of Wat Tyler, had become the Court Laureate, and, 
what was even worse, a Quarterly Reviewer. As for Coleridge ! — 
Coleridge, who had preached in the bright dawn of life that 
memorable sermon against kings, had now become a pensioner 
of George IV^, a pillar of Church and State, and dallied with the 
doctrine of Divine Right. This was the most unkindest cut of 
all. That Coleridge should turn traitor was the crime of crimes. 
It was the worse, the second, fall of man. It was sacrilege 
against those divine and hallowed days of youth when Harmer 
HUl with all its pines had stooped to listen to a poet as he passed. 
Upon these false friends the hand of Hazlitt was thereafter heavy. 
He was impatient even with Lamb, who, thinking much as 
Hazlitt did, nevertheless thought it more circumspectly. Hazlitt's 
friends certainly had much to bear. He stalked the world wrath- 
fuUy, holding his pistol at the heads of all he met, demanding that 
they should stand and deliver a hymn to the Revolution and a 
eulogy of the Emperor. Certainly it must have been hard to be 
patient with a furious essayist who asserted that Trafalgar was 
a tragedy and Austerlitz a crowning mercy — who, when Napoleon's 
flotilla was gathered at Boulogne, insisted that all his friends 
should regard the prospective invader of their country as a 
universal benefactor. The course of events was not favourable 
to him. The side he took became more and more a lost cause 
and was at last swallowed up in total defeat. Hazlitt was not 
a good loser. If he did not lose his hope, he certainly lost his 

^ Not, however, till 1824. 



xxviii Introduction 

temper. Indeed, he confesses as much in a Httle passage of 
self -analysis : 

I have often been reproached with extravagance for considering 
things only in their abstract principles, and with heat or ill-temper, 
for getting into a passion about what no ways concerned me. If any 
one wishes to see me quite calm, they may cheat me in a bargain, 
or tread upon my toes; but a truth repelled, or a sophism repeated, 
totally disconcerts me, and I lose all patience. I am not, in the ordinary 
acceptation of the term, a good-natured man ; that is, many things 
annoy me besides what interferes with my own ease and interest. 
I hate a lie; a piece of injustice wounds me to the quick, though 
nothing but the report of it reach me. Therefore I have made many 
enemies and tew friends ; for the public know nothing of well-wishers, 
and keep a wary eye on those that would reform them. Coleridge 
used to complain of my irascibility in this respect, and not without 
reason. Would that he had possessed a little of my tenaciousness 
and jealousy of temper; and then, with his eloquence to paint the 
wrong, and acuteness to detect it, his country and the cause of liberty 
might not have fallen without a struggle! (Plain Speaker, "On 
Depth and Superficiality.") 

It was claimed by Coleridge and others that the first great 
revulsion of their feelings towards France dated from the attack 
of the Directory on the liberty of Switzerland in 1798. That 
invasion, morally indefensible, is difficult to justify even on the 
lower ground of military or political necessity. But, even here, 
we should know what we are condemning. The Swiss Con- 
federacy overthrown by France was in fact nothing like the 
later and excellent Swiss Republic. The peasants of Vaud and 
the Valais, held in subjection by the petty oligarchs of Berne, 
knew little of the "mountain liberty" dear to the poets. When 
such a man as Gibbon, the last person in the world to feel 
benevolent towards political discontent, permits himself the 
criticism to be found in that long youthful letter by him 
describing the Swiss constitution^, the ordinary observer is 
tempted to believe that real Swiss liberty began rather than ended 
with the Helvetic Repubhc instituted by France in 1798. But 
the great fact remains, that interference with one independent 
nation by another is in general utterly wrong, and specially 
suspicious when lofty motives are urged in justification. Still, 
when we read with admiration that splendid sonnet of Words- 
worth, it is well to ask ourselves whether we ought to weep for 
the subjugation of the Swiss Republic in 1798 and have no tears 
for the attempted subjugation of the French Republic in 1793. 
It was this national hypocrisy or inconsistency of ours that 

irritated Hazlitt. He held his principles without 
thl^R"vfe"wers thought of compromise, and he had to suffer for 

his tenacity. It is difficult for us to understand 
the power that was wielded a century ago by the party Reviews, 

1 Works, 1814, Vol. II, Letter ix. 



Hazlitt's Life and Writings xxix 

by such persons as Giflford and Croker in the Quarterly Review 
and John Wilson (called Christopher North) in Blackwood's 
Magazine. The pubhc seem really to have been terrorised by 
the truculence of these periodiceds, and afraid to read or think 
otherwise than the Reviewers permitted. Ostensibly critical, 
these magazines had nothing to do with literature. They 
were purely political organs. If a writer was suspected of any 
leaning towards liberal views in politics, then the hirelings of 
Mr Murray in London and of Mr Blackwood in Edinburgh fell 
upon him with their bludgeons. Thus, Keats was friendly with 
Leigh Hunt ; Leigh Hunt had been imprisoned for criticising the 
Prince Regent; therefore Keats must be bludgeoned; and 
bludgeoned he was in articles that are among the ineffaceable 
shames of our literary history. The Edinburgh Review, organ of 
the Whigs, must not be exempted from general condemnation, 
though Jeffrey and his contributors at their worst were cleanness 
itself in comparison with Gifford and Wilson. The Edinburgh 
cannot claim, like The Quarterly, to have killed a poet. Its most 
famous feat is the condemnation of Wordsworth's Excursion in an 
article beginning with the now historic words, " This will never do ! " 
The Tory reviewers hailed Hazlitt -with joy as a fitting victim 
for their sport. Poor Keats had failed them. He had simply 
perished without any visible sign of anguish ; but Hazlitt, though 
tough enough to last, was more easily hurt, and (deUghtful 
quality) shouted when he was hurt. Let us glance for a moment 
at the literary methods of that famous time. Perhaps the best 
of all Hazlitt's books is Table Talk. This was reviewed in Black- 
wood for August 1822 by someone who claimed to be a scholar 
and gentleman, entitled therefore to read the cockney Hazlitt 
a lesson in good style and manners. Here are a few sentences : 

The whole surface of these volumes is one gaping sore of wounded 
and festering vanity; and in short. ..our table-talker "is rather an 
ULCER than a man." Now, it is one thing to feel sore, and a bad 
thing it is there is no denying; but to tell all the world the story of 
one's soreness, to be continually poking at the bandages, and dis- 
playing all the ugly things they ought to cover, is quite another, and 
a far worse affair. 

A littie of this is quite enough. Hazhtt was maddened by 
these attacks. He tried to retaliate in various periodicals; but 
he was attempting the impossible. The rowdy blackguardism 
that fails may perhaps be corrected, but not the rowdy black- 
guardism that pays. The combination of vulgarity with success 
is irresistible. Wilson and Gifford were " in " ; Hazhtt was 
"out" ; and neither Hazlitt nor anyone else could hurt their very 
hypothetical feelings. 

The actual events of Hazlitt's private hfe are not important, 

and only a brief recital need be made of his personal 

o°Authtfrshrp ^^^ literary doings. He lived at Winterslow from 

1808 to 1 81 2. when he moved to York Street. 



XXX Introduction 

Westminster, the house once occupied by Milton, whose noble 
spirit, did it haunt this sublunary world, would have consorted 
rather with the tenant Hazlitt than with the landlord Jeremy 
Bentham. In 1812 he delivered at the Russell Institution ten 
lectures on philosophy, some of which survived in manuscript 
and were printed in the Literary Remains. They indicate that 
Hazlitt's interest in philosophy was after all quite literary. The 
first whoUy characteristic work of his to appear in book form was 
The Round Table (18 17) containing matter from his contributions 
to The Examiner, The Morning Chronicle and The Champion. 
Here we have the essential Hazlitt, the Hazlitt of flashing, con- 
tentious sentences, full of matter, intimating intense enjoyment 
in the writer and inciting to intense enjoyment in the reader. 
The scale of the essays hardly allowed him to wind into his subject 
as he was to do later, but the imposed brevity gave his aphoristic 
genius its chance. The same year (1817) saw the publication of 
his Characters of Shakespear's Plays, a book which possibly its 
own generation found more usefully enlightening than we do. 
Hazlitt's enjoyment of Shakespeare had (hke Lamb's) a singular 
completeness ensuing from his appreciation of poetry, his sense 
of drama, and his love for the theatre. He lived in a fortunate 
hour. He beheld the sunset splendour of Siddons and hailed the 
meridian brightness of Edmund Kean. The classic dignity of 
John Kemble and the fervent emotionalism of Miss O'Neill 
illustrated for him the extremes of Shakespeare's dramatic art. 
Much that we know of these dead and gone players we learn 
from Hazlitt. He is, in a special sense, the historian of Kean, 
whose first impersonations in London he praised in The Morning 
Chronicle. A View of the English Stage (1818) reprints a number 
of dramatic criticisms from The Chronicle, The Examiner and The 
Champion. Two years later HazUtt wrote a fine series of theatrical 
essays for The London Magazine, not fully reprinted until 1903 
[Works, Vol. viii). 

The years 18 19-1820 were in a special sense Hazlitt's "lecture 

years," for at the Surrey Institution in the Black- 
Le^/tu"er ^ friars Road he dehvered those three sets of discourses 

that form the matter of three excellent and always 
popular volumes. Lectures on the English Poets (18 18), Lectures on 
the English Comic Writers (18 19) and Lectures chiefly on the 
Dramatic Literature of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (1820). Talfourd 
gives an interesting description of Hazlitt as lecturer : 

Mr Hazlitt delivered three courses of lectures at the Surrey Institution 
...before audiences with whom he had but "an imperfect sympathy." 
They consisted chiefly of Dissenters, who agreed with him in his hatred 
of Lord Castlereagh, but who "loved no plays"; of Quakers, who 
approved him as the opponent of Slavery and Capital Punishment, 
but who "heard no music"; of citizens devoted to the main chance, 
who had a hankering after "the improvement of the mind," but to 
whom his favourite doctrine of its natural disinterestedness was a 



Hazlitt's Life and Writings xxxi 

riddle ; of a few enemies who came to sneer ; and a few friends who 
were eager to learn and admire. The comparative insensibility of 
the bulk of his audience to his finest passages sometimes provoked 
him to awaken their attention by points which broke the train of 
his discourse, after which he could make himself amends by some 
abrupt paradox which might set their prejudices on edge, and make 
them" fancy they were shocked.... He once had an edifying advantage 
over them. He was enumerating the humanities which endeared 
Dr Johnson to his mind; and at the close of an agreeable catalogue 
mentioned, as last and noblest, "his carrying the poor victim of disease 
and dissipation on his back through Fleet Street," at which a titter 
rose from some, who were struck by the picture as ludicrous, and a 
murmur from others, who deemed the allusion unfit for ears polite. He 
paused for an instant and then added in his sturdiest and most impres- 
sive manner, "an act which realises the parable of the Good Samaritan," 
at which his moral and delicate hearers shrank rebuked into deep silence. 
He was not eloquent in the true sense of the term ; for his thoughts 
were too weighty to be moved along by the shallow stream of feeling 
which an evening's excitement can rouse. He wrote all his lectures, 
and read them as they were written; but his deep voice and earnest 
manner suited his matter well. He seemed to dig into his subject — 
and not in vain. {Literary Remains.) 

But a greater than Talfourd was listening to Hazlitt. Writing 
to his brother in February 1818, Keats observes: 

I hear Hazlitt's lectures regularly, his last was on Gray, Collins, 
Young, etc., and he gave a very fine piece of discriminating criticism 
on Swift, Voltaire and Rabelais. I was very disappointed at his 
treatment of Chatterton. 

The poet was then twenty-two and had but another three 
years of hfe before him. His first slim volume had already 
appeared. Endymion, dedicated to the memory of that same 
Chatterton, was being hastily prepared for the printer. A few 
weeks earlier he had noted "Hazlitt's depth of taste" as being 
one of three things to rejoice at in the world of his time. The 
other two were The Excursion — and the pictures of Haydon. 
Upon the last we may remark that much can be forgiven to 
friendship. 

Two other important pubUcations by Hazlitt belong to the 
year 1819, A Letter to William Gifford Esq. and 
Gifford^"'^ Political Essays. The latter work contains many 
pieces collected from various periodicals (together 
with some "characters" from his early compilation The Eloquence 
of the British Senate), and exhibits Hazlitt at his best and woist. 
Some pieces are little more than rancorous journalism with no 
permanent interest; but others are among his very finest essays. 
The Letter to Gifford was a deliberate attempt to get even with that 
person. The pamphlet has been highly praised as a piece of tremen- 
dous invective, but, really, it is much less vitriolic than some of 



xxxii Introduction 

Hazlitt's shorter pieces — the character of Gifford, for instance, 
in The Spirit of the Age. It is far too long. Burke's Letter to 
a Noble Lord, which the admiring HazUtt probably had in mind 
as a model of scale, is so different in scope as to afford the reader 
an instructive exercise in the comparison of effective and ineffective 
polemic. Hazlitt made the tactical mistake of attempting to argue 
with his adversary. With an insistence that is almost pathetic, 
Hazlitt tries to convince Gifford (and such of the world as might 
read the epistle) that he is a metaphysician of parts ; and so the 
Letter concludes with another attempt to restate his views on 
the Natural Disinterestedness of the Human Mind. As befits 
a now practised writer, Hazlitt is vastly more lucid than in his 
efforts of twenty years earlier, but he leaves us without any con- 
viction that his alleged metaphysical discovery is either true or 
useful. 

In 1 82 1 appeared the first volume of his Table Talk, the second 
following a year later. Among several works of 
Later Works high excellence it is hard to choose one and call it 
best. Still, most lovers of Hazlitt, restricted to 
one, would probably give their choice to this body of essays, so 
hard to match for variety of subject, brilliance of style and valid 
criticism of life and letters. The Characteristics of 1823 was an 
attempt to imitate the Maxims of La Rochefoucauld. It cannot 
be called entirely successful. Hazlitt's best aphorisms are to be 
found scattered in profusion up and down his longer essays ; his 
deliberate attempts at epigram are more like excised paragraphs 
than the stamped and coined utterance of genuine aphorism. 

Sketches of the Principal Picture Galleries in England (1824) 
recalls the adventures of the early painting days, and confirms 
the view that Hazlitt was, on the whole, an excellent critic of 
pictures. Nowhere does he attempt a purely literary fantasia 
upon a theme pictorial such as we find, for instance, in Ruskin's 
description of Tintoretto's "Last Judgment," where much of the 
critic's ecstasy arises from imagined beauties that are simply not 
paintable. With Hazlitt a picture is never more than a picture, 
and so we enjoy his writing as he enjoyed the picture. Sometimes 
he seems to enjoy certain pictures that later, and presumably 
better, taste prefers to neglect, but on the whole his judgment is 
quite remarkably in accord with modern preferences. 

In 1825 appeared The Spirit of the Age or Contemporary 
Portraits, a series of character sketches fuller, rounder and less 
distorted than his earlier efforts in this line. Lamb praises it 
highly in a letter to Bernard Barton, calling the Home Tooke 
" a matchless portrait." It is indeed one of Hazlitt's best works. 
The essence of a whole period is concentrated in its pungent 
pages. It was followed in 1826 by The Plain Speaker, a collection 
of essays matching the Table Talk, and only slightly less excellent 
than its companion. To the same year belongs the Notes of a 
Journey mentioned earlier. 



Hazlitt's Life and Writings xxxiii 

During all this busy period Hazlitt had migrated a good deal. 

He lived at York Street till 1819. We find him in 
Nap^i'/on°* Southampton Buildings during 1820-22, and later 

in such respectable thoroughfares as Down Street 
and Half-Moon Street; after which Bouverie Street seems a 
decline. All these sojournings must be understood as punctuated 
by frequent flights to Winterslow. His last lodging was in Frith 
Street, Soho, whither he went in 1830. He was now past his 
half-century. His health had begun to fail, and his circumstances, 
depending as they did upon his immediate efforts, naturally 
grew difficult. Since 1826 he had been labouring at his longest, 
least read and most unprofitable work, the Life of Napoleon. 
Upon this child of his growing age he lavished his tenderest care 
and his fullest exertions ; but it proved a child of sorrow. Three 
volumes appeared in 1828, and the fourth in 1830. the year of his 
death. It attracted little notice, and, the pubhshers failing, 
Hazlitt got nothing. What interest it still retains centres, of 
course, in Hazlitt, not in Napoleon. The life of Napoleon could 
not be written in 1826. It can hardly be written even now. Still, 
we cannot say that Hazlitt made the best use of the material open 
to him. He was essentially an essayist, and lost his touch on the 
large canvas of a great historical picture. Its chief literary fault 
is a lack of sustained narrative power. Few indeed are the 
Gibbons, Macaulays and Carlyles, and Hazlitt is not numbered 
among those who approach the standard of these giants. He 
cannot compare even with less exalted historians. His account 
of that epic adventure, the Campaign in Italy, is simply tame; 
and his story of Brumaire, set by the side of Mr Fisher's, exhibits 
the difference between forced effort and genuine impulse. Hazlitt's 
easy and sweeping generalisations about the French and English 
national character will not do. He could not forgive France for 
deserting the Emperor so basely, and prostrating herself before 
the Allied sovereigns so abjectly; and so he rarely loses an 
opportunity of pouring out contempt. Even his view of the 
military operations has a political bias. Beside that dazzling 
line of Marshals the English commanders certainly make very 
little show; but they were not all fools. Hazlitt's denial of 
talent to Wellington is as stupid as Tolstoy's denial of genius to 
Napoleon. 

The story of the Emperor's glorious rise and tragic fall was, 
appropriately, Hazlitt's last work. One other book, however, 
belongs to 1830, an odd and attractive volume reprinting various 
magazine articles in which Hazlitt had recorded his conversations 
with the painter James Northcote. This is not one of the most 
generally read among his works ; yet it contains more keen and 
sagacious comments on books, pictures and life in general than 
are dreamt of in the philosophy of many graver authors. How 
much is HazHtt and how much is Northcote it is impossible to 
say; but all of it is delightful. 



xxxiv Introduction 

In August 1830 Hazlitt became seriously ill. For a short 
time, during his early days as a Parliamentary 
Deatlf ^^ ^"'^ reporter, he had exceeded in the matter of intoxi- 
cants, but he soon abandoned an evil habit that 
was due more to his surroundings than to his desires. As com- 
pensation he took to tea, and for the rest of his life drank that 
enchanting liquor not wisely, but too strong. The occasional 
references in his work to indigestion are significant. It is even 
possible that excess of tea may have shortened his life, for his 
fatal illness arose from internal inflammation. Alone, and in 
poverty, he gradually sank for several weeks. Material help 
came from his old editor Lord Jeffrey and his old friend Charles 
Lamb; but he was then beyond the reach of human aid. He 
went out with the Bourbons. Some years before, he had said, 
" I confess I should like to live to see the downfall of the Bourbons. 
That is a vital question with me; and I shall like it the better 
the sooner it happens " {Table Talk, "On the Fear of Death"). 
He had his wish. The last Bourbon king of France fled his 
country after the July Revolution of 1830. The news cheered 
Hazlitt, but he could scarcely believe that the change was per- 
manent. The other changes he was not to see. He died on the 
1 8th of September 1830 at the age of fifty-two — young for the 
child of such long-lived parents. Had he reached the years of 
his father he would have seen the best days of Napoleon III ; 
had he reached the years of his mother he would have seen the 
worst. 

Six years after his death appeared two volumes of Literary 
Remains containing, as preliminaries, a short bio- 
graphy by his son, some Thoughts on the Genius 
of Hazlitt by Lytton, and a valuable personal sketch by Talfourd. 
The bulk of the work was occupied by essays and papers not 
republished by Hazlitt in any of his books. Included among 
these were such masterpieces as The Fight and My First Acquaint- 
ance with Poets. Some of them were reprinted in a still later 
volume called Winterslow, embodying pieces written in that loved 
retreat. Quite a mass of his work, including sixteen long essays 
written for The Edinburgh Review between 1814 to 1830, remained 
uncollected until the appearance of the complete edition of his 
works a few years ago. 

Hazlitt died, as he had lived, in an attitude of defiance ; for 
the last recorded utterance of one who had dealt 
Adventure ^"^ Suffered many a shrewd blow for the sake of 

a lost cause was, "Well, I have had a happy life." 
There is no need to doubt it. The man who praised the 
English "bruisers" found his joy in combat. Wliatever else 
Hazlitt is, tame he is never. He enjoyed as strenuously as he 
fought. For him a book, a picture, or a walk is an adventure. 
Adventures are to the adventurous, Disraeli tells us; and for 
HazUtt the age of adventure was never past. According to 



Hazlitt's Life and "Writings xxxv 

Cervantes, adventures should begin at an inn. Hazlitt's usually 
ended there. Think of such essays as The Fight and On Going a 
Journey. Think how many passages in his work can be typified 
by such a sentence as: "It was on the loth of April, 1798, that 
I sat down to a volume of the New Eloise, at the inn at Llangollen, 
over a bottle of sherry and a cold chicken." Consider the spirit 
of such a passage as the following : 

The greatest pleasure in life is that of reading, while we are young. 
I have had as much of this pleasure, perhaps, as anyone. As I grow 
older, it fades; or else the stronger stimulus of writing takes off the 
edge of it. At present, I have neither time nor inclination for it: 
yet I should like to devote a year's entire leisure to a course of the 
English Novelists ; and perhaps clap on that old sly knave Sir Walter, 
to the end of the list. It is astonishing how I used formerly to relish 
the style of certain authors, at a time when I myself despaired of ever 
writing a single line. Probably this was the reason. It is not in mental 
as in natural ascent — intellectual objects seem higher when we survey 
them from below, than when we look down from any given elevation 
above the common level. My three favourite writers about the time 
I speak of were Burke, Junius, and Rousseau. I was never weary of 
admiring and wondering at the felicities of the stjde, the turns of 
expression, the refinements of thought and sentiment: I laid the 
book down to find out the secret of so much strength and beauty, 
and took it up again in despair, to read on and admire. So I passed 
whole days, months, and I may add, years ; and have only this to say 
now, that as my life began, so I could wish it may end. The last time 
I tasted this luxury in full perfection was one day after a sultry day's 
walk in summer between Farnham and Alton. I was fairly tired out; 
I walked into an inn-yard (I think at the latter place); I was shown 
by the waiter to what looked at first like common out-houses at the 
other end of it, but they turned out to be a suite of rooms, probably 
a hundred years old — the one I entered opened into an old-fashioned 
garden, embellished with beds of larkspur and a leaden Mercury; 
it was wainscoted, and there was a grave-looking, dark-coloured 
portrait of Charles II hanging up over the tiled chimney-piece. I had 
Love for Love in my pocket, and began to read ; coffee was brought 
in a silver coffee-pot; the cream, the bread and butter, everything 
was excellent, and the flavour of Congreve's style prevailed over all. 
I prolonged the entertainment till a late hour, and relished this divine 
comedy better even than when I used to see it played by Miss Mellon, 
as Miss Prue ; Bob Palmer, as Tattle ; and Bannister, as honest Ben. 
This circumstance happened just five years ago, and it seems like 
yesterday. If I count my life so by lustres, it will soon glide away; 
yet I shall not have to repine, if, while it lasts, it is enriched with a 
few such recollections! {Plain Speaker, "Whether Genius is conscious 
of its Powers.") 

Can we doubt that one in whom the will to adventure was so 
strong had a happy life? The sense of thrill and discovery in 
Hazlitt gives to his essays a kinship with the great literature of 
adventure or wayfaring, the literature that begins for us with 
The Odyssey and includes in later times such different and de- 



xxxvi Introduction 

lightful books as The Pilgrim's Progress, Tom Jones, the writings 
of Borrow and The Pickwick Papers. A fondness for Hazlitt is 
a fondness for health in literature. 

Into any general criticism of his writing this is not the place 
Haziitt's to enter. One or two points, however, should be 

Prose noticed. Haziitt's frequent epigrammatic brilliance 

is never false glitter. Some later essajdsts have been tempted to 
say brilliant things, not because they are true, but merely because 
they are brilliant. Hazlitt is guiltless of this bid for applause. 
Whatever virtues he may have lacked, moral and intellectual 
honesty he had in unusual fullness. Forcible, and even furious, 
he may sometimes be called ; but he is no swaggering companion, 
he is no Ancient Pistol of prose, merely blusterous and truculent, 
like some who have thought to imitate him. Hazlitt wrote from 
fierce unshakeable convictions, and his literary rectitude is as 
unimpeachable as his political consistency. He is not, like Lamb, 
a "quaint" writer. Indeed, he says of himself, "I hate my style 
to be known, as I hate all idiosyncracy." Nor is he one of those 
whom we may call great architects of prose — like the Burke whose 
domed and pinnacled sentences not all the sundering rancour of 
the Revolution could prevent Hazlitt from admiring. Much of 
his work is what we should call journalism — current criticism, 
hastily set down for waiting periodicals ; and the wonder is that 
its average is so high — so high that Stevenson the fastidious feels 
compelled to assure us that, though we are mighty fine fellows 
nowadays, we cannot write like WUliam Hazlitt. Now and then 
he cheers our imperfection by giving us a bad sentence or a 
breathless paragraph, but not often. His most noticeable oddity 
is a trick of separating antecedent and relative too far, at times 
with unhappy results, as when he writes, "On the contrary, the 
celebrated person just alluded to might be said to grind the 
sentences between his teeth, which he afterwards committed to 
paper" {Plain Speaker, "Prose Style of Poets"). But these faults 
are lost in the general excellence of his work, which combines 
brilliance with unstudied ease of manner in a style altogether his 
own. He never strains after "fine writing," but he rises, when 
he wishes, to heights of noble and moving eloquence. 

Walter Bagehot, who owed something of his own bright style 
Hazlitt and to Hazlitt, and might have learned from him, with 
his Con- advantage, to relax the personal reserve that makes 

temporaries ^iis Sparkling utterance just a little frigid, actually 
preferred Hazlitt to Lamb, thereby incurring the wrath of his 
(and Haziitt's) old acquaintance Crabb Robinson : 

He nearly quarrelled with me... for urging that Hazlitt was a much 
greater writer than Charles Lamb — a harmless opinion which I still 
hold, but which Mr Robinson met with this outburst: "You, sir, 
You prefer the works of that scoundrel, that odious, that malignant 
writer, to the exquisite essays of that angelic creature ! " {Literary 
Studies, "Henry Crabb Robinson.") 



Hazlitt's Life and Writings xxxvii 

Bagehot is distinguished enough to be entitled to a preference 
which the normal reader need neither make nor share. The 
obvious and wholesome thing to do is to avoid invidious dis- 
tinction between two essayists of very different excellence and to 
enjoy each for the best he has to give. 

Both Lamb and Hazlitt were on the side of the ancients. 
They are safer guides to us when they write of the poets 
and dramatists of older and more flavoured times than on 
the rare occasions when they touch on the newer literature. 
Hazlitt has occasionally some good references to Byron, but 
on the whole his attitude is one of suspicion. Neither Lamb 
nor Hazlitt had a genuine liking for Keats, and their mis- 
understanding of Shelley was simply abject. On the other 
hand Hazlitt's admiration for the Waverley novels was as tre- 
mendous as Borrow's depreciation of them was ludicrous. 
Hazlitt's acquaintance with foreign literature (other than a few 
works by Rousseau) was very very small, and his references to the 
current music of his day indicate that the higher reaches of that 
art were quite beyond him. 

The portraits of Hazlitt are many, but so various as to leave 

. us with no such clear and instantly recognisable 

Man'** t e image of the man as we have, say, of Scott, or 

Burns, or Wordsworth. Talfourd's pen-portrait is 

admirable : 

In person, Mr Hazlitt was of the middle size, with a handsome 
and eager countenance, worn by sickness and thought, and dark hair, 
which had curled stiffly over the temples, and was only of late years 
sprinkled with grey. His gait was slouching and awkward, and his 
dress neglected ; but when he began to talk, he could not be mistaken 
for a common man. In the company of persons with whom he was 
not familiar his bashfulness was painful ; but when he became entirely 
at ease, and entered on a favourite topic, no one's conversation was 
ever more dehghtful. {Literary Remains.) 

So much for the outward man. For the rest let us summon 
another witness. Thus writes Lamb in that Letter of Elia to 
Robert Southey which gave the self-righteous laureate a trouncing 
he deserved and preserves for us many tributes to Elian friends : 

What hath soured him [Hazlitt], and made him to suspect his 
friends of infidelity towards him, when there was no such matter, 
I know not. I stood well with him for fifteen years (the proudest 
of my life), and have ever spoke my full mind of him to some, to 
whom his panegyric must naturally be least tasteful. I never in 
thought swerved from him, I never betrayed him, I never slackened 
in my admiration of him, I was the same to him (neither better nor 
worse) though he could not see it, as in the days when he thought 
fit to trust me. At this instant, he may be preparing for me some 
compliment, above my deserts, as he has sprinkled many such among 
his admirable books, for which I rest his debtor; or, for anything 
I know, or can guess to the contrary, he may be about to read a lecture 



xxxviii Introduction 

on my weaknesses. He is welcome to them (as he was to my humble 
hearth), if they can divert a spleen, or ventilate a fit of sullenness. 
I wish he would not quarrel with the world at the rate he does ; but 
the reconciliation must be effected by himself, and I despair of living 
to see that day. But, protesting against much that he has written, 
and some things which he chooses to do ; judging him by his conversa- 
tion which I enjoyed so long, and relished so deeply; or by his books, 
in those places where no clouding passion intervenes — I should belie 
my own conscience, if I said less, than that I think W. H. to be, in 
his natural and healthy state, one of the wisest and finest spirits 
breathing. So far from being ashamed of that intimacy, which was 
betwixt us, it is my boast that I was able for so many years to have 
preserved it entire ; and I think I shall go to my grave without finding, 
or expecting to find, such another companion. 

To this it would be an offence to add another word. 



MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS 

My father was a Dissenting Minister at W m in 

Shropshire; and in the year 1798 (the figures that compose 
that date are to me like the ' dreaded name of Demogorgon') 
Mr Coleridge came to Shrewsbury, to succeed Mr Rowe in 
the spiritual charge of a Unitarian Congregation there. He 
did not come till late on the Saturday afternoon before he 
was to preach ; and Mr Rowe, who himself went down to the 
coach in a state of anxiety and expectation, to look for the 
arrival of his successor, could find no one at all answering 
the description but a round-faced man in a short black coat 
(like a shooting jacket) which hardly seemed to have been 
made for him, but who seemed to be talking at a great rate 
to his fellow-passengers. Mr Rowe had scarce returned to 
give an account of his disappointment, when the round-faced 
man in black entered, and dissipated all doubts on the subject, 
by beginning to talk. He did not cease while he staid; nor 
has he since, that I know of. He held the good town of 
Shrewsbury in delightful suspense for three weeks that he 
remained there, 'fluttering the proud Salopians like an eagle 
in a dove-cote'; and the Welch mountains that skirt the 
horizon with their tempestuous confusion, agree to have 
heard no such mystic sounds since the days of 

High-born Hoel's harp or soft Llewellyn's lay! 

As we passed along between W m and Shrewsbury, and 

I eyed their blue tops seen through the wintry branches, 
or the red rustling leaves of the sturdy oak-trees by the 
road-side, a sound was in my ears as of a Siren's song; I was 
stunned, startled with it, as from deep sleep; but I had no 
notion then that I should ever be able to express my admiration 



2 My First Acquaintance with Poets 

to others in motley imagery or quaint allusion, till the light 
of his genius shone into my soul, like the sun's rays glittering 
in the puddles of the road. I was at that time dumb, inarticu- 
late, helpless, like a worm by the way-side, crushed, bleeding, 
lifeless ; but now, bursting from the deadly bands that bound 
them. 

With Styx nine times round them, 

my ideas float on winged words, and as they expand their 
plumes, catch the golden light of other years. My soul has 
indeed remained in its original bondage, dark, obscure, with 
longings infinite and unsatisfied; my heart, shut up in the 
prison-house of this rude clay, has never found, nor will it 
ever find, a heart to speak to; but that my understanding 
also did not remain dumb and brutish, or at length found 
a language to express itself, I owe to Coleridge. But this is 
not to my purpose. 

My father lived ten miles from Shrewsbury, and was in 
the habit of exchanging visits with Mr Rowe, and with 
Mr Jenkins of Whitchurch (nine miles farther on) according 
to the custom of Dissenting Ministers in each other's neighbour- 
hood. A line of communication is thus established, by which 
the flame of civil and religious liberty is kept alive, and 
nourishes its smouldering fire unquenchable, like the fires 
in the Agamemnon of ^Eschylus, placed at different stations, 
that waited for ten long years to announce with their blazing 
pyramids the destruction of Troy. Coleridge had agreed to 
come over to see my father, according to the courtesy of the 
country, as Mr Rowe's probable successor; but in the mean- 
time I had gone to hear him preach the Sunday after his 
arrival. A poet and a philosopher getting up into a Unitarian 
pulpit to preach the Gospel, was a romance in these degenerate 
days, a sort of revival of the primitive spirit of Christianity, 
which was not to be resisted. 

It was in January, 1798, that I rose one morning before 
daylight, to walk ten miles in the mud, and went to hear this 
celebrated person preach. Never, the longest day I have to 
live, shall I have such another walk as this cold, raw, 
comfortless one, in the winter of the year 1798. II y a des 
impressions que ni le terns ni les circonstances peuvent ejff'acer. 



My First Acquaintance with Poets 3 

Dusse-je vivre des siecles entiers, le doux terns de ma jeunesse 
ne pent renaitre pour moi, ni s^effacer jamais dans ma memoir e. 
When I got there, the organ was playing the looth psalm, 
and, when it was done, Mr Coleridge rose and gave out his 
text, 'And he went up into the mountain to pray, himself, 
ALONE.' As he gave out this text, his voice 'rose like a steam 
of rich distilled perfumes,' and when he came to the two last 
words, which he pronounced loud, deep, and distinct, it seemed 
to me, who was then young, as if the sounds had echoed from the 
bottom of the human heart, and as if that prayer might have 
floated in solemn silence through the universe. The idea of 
St John came into mind, 'of one crying in the wilderness, 
who had his loins girt about, and whose food was locusts 
and wild honey.' The preacher then launched into his subject, 
like an eagle dallying with the wind. The sermon was upon 
peace and war; upon church and state — not their alliance, 
but their separation — on the spirit of the world and the spirit 
of Christianity, not as the same, but as opposed to one another. 
He talked of those who had 'inscribed the cross of Christ 
on banners dripping with human gore.' He made a poetical 
and pastoral excursion, — and to shew the fatal effects of war, 
drew a striking contrast between the simple shepherd boy, 
driving his team afield, or sitting under the hawthorn, piping 
to his flock, 'as though he should never be old,' and the same 
poor country-lad, crimped, kidnapped, brought into town, 
made drunk at an alehouse, turned into a wretched drummer- 
boy, with his hair sticking on end with powder and pomatum, 
a long cue at his back, and tricked out in the loathsome finery 
of the profession of blood. 

Such were the notes our once-lov'd poet sung. 

And for myself, I could not have been more dehghted if I had 
heard the music of the spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had 
met together. Truth and Genius had embraced, under the 
eye and with the sanction of Religion. This was even beyond 
my hopes. I returned home well satisfied. The sun that 
was still labouring pale and wan through the sky, obscured 
by thick mists, seemed an emblem of the good cause ; and the 
cold dank drops of dew that hung half melted on the beard 
of the thistle, had something genial and refreshing in them; 



4 My First Acquaintance with Poets 

for there was a spirit of hope and youth in all nature, that 
turned every thing into good. The face of nature had not 
then the brand of Jus Divinum on it: 

Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe. 

On the Tuesday following, the half-inspired speaker came. 
I was called down into the room where he was, and went 
half-hoping, half-afraid. He received me very graciously, 
and I listened for a long time without uttering a word. I did 
not suffer in his opinion by my silence. ' For those two hours,' 
he afterwards was pleased to say, 'he was conversing with 
W. H.'s forehead!' His appearance was different from what 
I had anticipated from seeing him before. At a distance, 
and in the dim light of the chapel, there was to me a strange 
wildness in his aspect, a dusky obscurity, and I thought him 
pitted with the small-pox. His complexion was at that time 
clear, and even bright — 

As are the children of yon azure sheen. 
His forehead was broad and high, light as if built of ivory, 
with large projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling beneath 
them like a sea with darkened lustre. 'A certain tender 
bloom his face o'erspread,' a purple tinge as we see it in the 
pale thoughtful complexions of the Spanish portrait-painters, 
Murillo and Velasquez. His mouth was gross, voluptuous, 
open, eloquent; his chin good-humoured and round; but his 
nose, the rudder of the face, the index of the will, was small, 
feeble, nothing — like what he has done. It might seem that 
the genius of his face as from a height surveyed and projected 
him (with sufficient capacity and huge aspiration) into the 
world unknown of thought and imagination, with nothing to 
support or guide his veering purpose, as if Columbus had 
launched his adventurous course for the New World in a 
scallop, without oars or compass. So at least I comment on 
it after the event. Coleridge in his person was rather above 
the common size, inclining to the corpulent, or like Lord 
Hamlet, 'somewhat fat and pursy.' His hair (now, alas! 
grey) was then black and glossy as the raven's, and fell in 
smooth masses over his forehead. This long pendulous hair 
is peculiar to enthusiasts, to those whose minds tend heaven- 
ward; and is traditionally inseparable (though of a different 



My First Acquaintance with Poets 5 

colour) from the pictures of Christ. It ought to belong, as 
a character, to all who preach Christ crucified, and Coleridge 
was at that time one of those! 

It was curious to observe the contrast between him and 
my father, who was a veteran in the cause, and then declining 
into the vale of years. He had been a poor Irish lad, carefully 
brought up by his parents, and sent to the University of 
Glasgow (where he studied under Adam Smith) to prepare 
him for his future destination. It was his mother's proudest 
wish to see her son a Dissenting Minister, So if we look back 
to past generations (as far as eye can reach) we see the same 
hopes, fears, wishes, followed by the same disappointments, 
throbbing in the human heart; and so we may see them (if 
we look forward) rising up for ever, and disappearing, like 
vapourish bubbles, in the human breast ! After being tossed 
about from congregation to congregation in the heats of the 
Unitarian controversy, and squabbles about the American 
war, he had been relegated to an obscure village, where he 
was to spend the last thirty years of his life, far from the only 
converse that he loved, the talk about disputed texts of 
Scripture and the cause of civil and religious liberty. Here 
he passed his days, repining but resigned, in the study of the 
Bible, and the perusal of the Commentators, — huge folios, 
not easily got through, one of which would outlast a winter ! 
Why did he pore on these from morn to night (with the 
exception of a walk in the fields or a turn in the garden to 
gather broccoli-plants or kidney-beans of his own rearing, 
with no small degree of pride and pleasure) ?• — Here were 
'no figures nor no fantasies,' — neither poetry nor philosophy — 
nothing to dazzle, nothing to excite modern curiosity; but 
to his lack-lustre eyes there appeared, within the pages of 
the ponderous, unwieldy, neglected tomes, the sacred name 
of JEHOVAH in Hebrew capitals : pressed down by the weight 
of the style, worn to the last fading thinness of the understand- 
ing, there were glimpses, glimmering notions of the patriarchal 
wanderings, with palm-trees hovering in the horizon, and 
processions of camels at the distance of three thousand years ; 
there was Moses with the Burning Bush, the number of the 
Twelve Tribes, types, shadows, glosses on the law and the 
prophets; there were discussions (dull enough) on the age of 



6 My First Acquaintance with Poets 

Methuselah, a mighty speculation! there were outlines, rude 
guesses at the shape of Noah's Ark and of the riches of 
Solomon's Temple; questions as to the date of the creation, 
predictions of the end of all things; the great lapses of time, 
the strange mutations of the globe were unfolded with the 
voluminous leaf, as it turned over; and though the soul 
might slumber with an hieroglyphic veil of inscrutable mysteries 
drawn over it, yet it was in a slumber ill-exchanged for all the 
sharpened realities of sense, wit, fancy, or reason. My father's 
life was comparatively a dream ; but it was a dream of infinity 
and eternity, of death, the resurrection, and a judgment to 
come! 

No two individuals were ever more unlike than were the 
host and his guest. A poet was to my father a sort of non- 
descript: yet whatever added grace to the Unitarian cause 
was to him welcome. He could hardly have been more 
surprised or pleased, if our visitor had worn wings. Indeed, 
his thoughts had wings; and as the silken sounds rustled 
round our little wainscoted parlour, my father threw back 
his spectacles over his forehead, his white hairs mixing with 
its sanguine hue; and a smile of delight beamed across his 
rugged cordial face, to think that Truth had found a new ally 
in Fancyi ! Besides, Coleridge seemed to take considerable 
notice of me, and that of itself was enough. He talked very 
familiarly, but agreeably, and glanced over a variety of 
subjects. At dinner-time he grew more animated, and dilated 
in a very edifying manner on Mary Wolstonecraft and 
Mackintosh. The last, he said, he considered (on my father's 
speaking of his Vindicice Gallicce as a capital performance) as 
a clever scholastic man — a master of the topics, — or as the 
ready warehouseman of letters, who knew exactly where to 
lay his hand on what he wanted, though the goods were not 
his own. He thought him no match for Burke, either in 
style or matter. Burke was a metaphysician. Mackintosh a 
mere logician. Burke was an orator (almost a poet) who 

^ My father was one of those who mistook his talent after all. He used 
to be very much dissatisfied that I preferred his Letters to his Sermons. 
The last were forced and dry; the first came naturally from him. For 
ease, half-plays on words, and a supine, monkish, indolent pleasantry, 
1 have never seen them equalled. 



My First Acquaintance with Poets 7 

reasoned in figures, because he had an eye for nature : Mackin- 
tosh, on the other hand, was a rhetorician, who had only an 
eye to common-places. On this I ventured to say that I had 
always entertained a great opinion of Burke, and that (as far 
as I could find) the speaking of him with contempt might be 
made the test of a vulgar democratical mind. This was the 
first observation I ever made to Coleridge, and he said it was 
a very just and striking one. I remember the leg of Welsh 
mutton and the turnips on the table that day had the finest 
flavour imaginable. Coleridge added that Mackintosh and 
Tom Wedgwood (of whom, however, he spoke highly) had 
expressed a very indifferent opinion of his friend Mr Words- 
worth, on which he remarked to them — 'He strides on so far 
before you, that he dwindles in the distance!' Godwin had 
once boasted to him of having carried on an argument with 
Mackintosh for three hours with dubious success; Coleridge 
told him — 'If there had been a man of genius in the room, 
he would have settled the question in five minutes.' He 
asked me if I had ever seen Mary Wolstonecraft, and I said, 
I had once for a few moments, and that she seemed to me to 
turn off Godwin's objections to something she advanced with 
quite a playful, easy air. He replied, that 'this was only 
one instance of the ascendancy which people of imagination 
exercised over those of mere intellect.' He did not rate 
Godwin very high^ (this was caprice or prejudice, real or 
affected) but he had a great idea of Mrs Wolstonecraft's 
powers of conversation, none at all of her talent for book- 
making. We talked a little about Holcroft. He had been 
asked if he was not much struck with him, and he said, he 
thought himself in more danger of being struck by him. 
I complained that he would not let me get on at all, for he 
required a definition of every the commonest word, exclaiming, 
'What do you mean by a sensation, Sir? What do you mean 
by an idea ? ' This, Coleridge said, was barricadoing the road 
to truth : — it was setting up a turnpike-gate at every step we 
took. I forget a great number of things, many more than 

^ He complained In particular of the presumption of attempting to 
establish the future immortality of man 'without' (as he said) 'knowing 
what Death was or what Life was' — and the tone in which he pronounced 
these two words seemed to convey a complete image of both. 



8 My First Acquaintance with Poets 

I remember; but the day passed off pleasantly, and the 
next morning Mr Coleridge was to return to Shrewsbury. 
When I came down to breakfast, I found that he had just 
received a letter from his friend T, Wedgwood, making him 
an offer of 150/. a-year if he chose to wave his present pursuit, 
and devote himself entirely to the study of poetry and 
philosophy. Coleridge seemed to make up his mind to close 
with this proposal in the act of tying on one of his shoes. 
It threw an additional damp on his departure. It took the 
wayward enthusiast quite from us to cast him into Deva's 
winding vales, or by the shores of old romance. Instead of 
living at ten miles distance, of being the pastor of a Dissenting 
congregation at Shrewsbury, he was henceforth to inhabit 
the Hill of Parnassus, to be a Shepherd on the Delectable 
Mountains. Alas ! I knew not the way thither, and felt very 
little gratitude for Mr Wedgwood's bounty. I was presently 
relieved from this dilemma; for Mr Coleridge, asking for a 
pen and ink, and going to a table to write something on a bit of 
card, advanced towards me with undulating step, and giving 
me the precious document, said that that was his address, 
Mr Coleridge, Nether-Stowey, Somersetshire ; and that he should 
be glad to see me there in a few weeks' time, and, if I chose, 
would come half-way to meet me. I was not less surprised 
than the shepherd-boy (this simile is to be found in Cassandra) 
when he sees a thunder-bolt fall close at his feet. I stammered 
out my acknowledgments and acceptance of this offer (I thought 
Mr Wedgwood's annuity a trifle to it) as well as I could; and 
this mighty business being settled, the poet-preacher took 
leave, and I accompanied him six miles on the road. It was 
a line morning in the middle of winter, and he talked the whole 
way. The scholar in Chaucer is described as going 

Sounding on his way. 

So Coleridge went on his. In digressing, in dilating, in passing 
from subject to subject, he appeared to me to float in air, to 
slide on ice. He told me in confidence (going along) that he 
should have preached two sermons before he accepted the 
situation at Shrewsbury, one on Infant Baptism, the other on 
the Lord's Supper, shewing that he could not administer 
either, which would have effectually disqualified him for the 



My First Acquaintance with Poets 9 

object in view. I observed that he continually crossed me 
on the way by shifting from one side of the foot-path to the 
other. This struck me as an odd movement; but I did not 
at that time connect it with any instability of purpose or 
involuntary change of principle, as I have done since. He 
seemed unable to keep on in a strait line. He spoke shghtingly 
of Hume (whose Essay on Miracles he said was stolen from 
an objection started in one of South's sermons — Credat Judaus 
Apella!). I was not very much pleased at this account of 
Hume, for I had just been reading, with infinite relish, that 
completest of all metaphysical choke-fears, his Treatise on 
Human Nature, to which the Essays, in point of scholastic 
subtlety and close reasoning, are mere elegant trifling, light 
summer-reading. Coleridge even denied the excellence of 
Hume's general style, which I think betrayed a want of taste 
or candour. He however made me amends by the manner 
in which he spoke of Berkeley. He dwelt particularly on 
his Essay on Vision as a masterpiece of analytical reasoning. 
So it undoubtedly is. He was exceedingly angry with 
Dr Johnson for striking the stone with his foot, in allusion 
to this author's Theory of Matter and Spirit, and saying, 
'Thus I confute him. Sir.' Coleridge drew a parallel (I don't 
know how he brought about the connection) between Bishop 
Berkeley and Tom Paine. He said the one was an instance 
of a subtle, the other of an acute mind, than which no two 
things could be more distinct. The one was a shop-boy's 
quality, the other the characteristic of a philosopher. He 
considered Bishop Butler as a true philosopher, a profound 
and conscientious thinker, a genuine reader of nature and of 
his own mind. He did not speak of his Analogy, but of his 
Sermons at the Rolls'' Chapel, of which I had never heard. 
Coleridge somehow always contrived to prefer the unknown 
to the known. In this instance he was right. The Analogy 
is a tissue of sophistry, of wire-drawn, theological special- 
pleading; the Sermons (with the Preface to them) are in a 
fine vein of deep, matured reflection, a candid appeal to our 
observation of human nature, without pedantry and without 
bias. I told Coleridge I had written a few remarks, and was 
sometimes foolish enough to believe that I had made a discovery 
on the same subject (the Natural Disinterestedness of the Human 



lo My First Acquaintance with Poets 

Mind) — and I tried to explain my view of it to Coleridge, 
who listened with great willingness, but I did not succeed in 
making myself understood. I sat down to the task shortly 
afterwards for the twentieth time, got new pens and paper, 
determined to make clear work of it, wrote a few meagre 
sentences in the skeleton-style of a mathematical demonstra- 
tion, stopped half-way down the second page; and, after 
trying in vain to pump up any words, images, notions, 
apprehensions, facts, or observations, from that gulph of 
abstraction in which I had plunged myself for four or five 
years preceding, gave up the attempt as labour in vain, and 
shed tears of helpless despondency on the blank unfinished 
paper. I can write fast enough now. Am I better than I 
was then ? Oh no ! One truth discovered, one pang of 
regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the 
fluency and flippancy in the world. Would that I could go 
back to what I then was ! Why can we not revive past times 
as we can revisit old places? If I had the quaint Muse of 
Sir Philip Sidney to assist me, I would write a Sonnet to the 

Road between W m and Shrewsbury^ and immortalise every 

step of it by some fond enigmatical conceit. I would swear 
that the very milestones had ears, and that Harmer-hill 
stooped with all its pines, to listen to a poet, as he passed! 
I remember but one other topic of discourse in this walk. 
He mentioned Paley, praised the naturalness and clearness 
of his style, but condemned his sentiments, thought him a 
mere time-serving casuist, and said that 'the fact of his work 
on Moral and Political Philosophy being made a text-book 
in our Universities was a disgrace to the national character.' 
We parted at the six-mile stone; and I returned homeward 
pensive but much pleased. I had met with unexpected 
notice from a person, whom I believed to have been prejudiced 
against me. 'Kind and affable to me had been his con- 
descension, and should be honoured ever with suitable regard.' 
He was the first poet I had known, and he certainly answered 
to that inspired name. I had heard a great deal of his powers 
of conversation, and was not disappointed. In fact, I never 
met with any thing at all like them, either before or since. 
I could easily credit the accounts which were circulated of 
his holding forth to a large party of ladies and gentlemen, ar 



My First Acquaintance with Poets ii 

evening or two before, on the Berkeleian Theory, when he 
made the whole material universe look like a transparency of 
fine words; and another story (which I believe he has some- 
where told himself) of his being asked to a party at Birmingham, 
of his smoking tobacco and going to sleep after dinner on a 
sofa, where the company found him to their no small surprise, 
which was increased to wonder when he started up of a sudden, 
and rubbing his eyes, looked about him, and launched into a 
three-hours' description of the third heaven, of which he had 
had a dream, very different from Mr Southey's Vision of 
Judgment, and also from that other Vision of Judgment, 
which Mr Murray, the Secretary of the Bridge-street Junto, 
has taken into his especial keeping! 

On my way back, I had a sound in my ears, it was the voice 
of Fancy: I had a light before me, it was the face of Poetry. 
The one still lingers there, the other has not quitted my side ! 
Coleridge in truth met me half-way on the ground of philosophy, 
or I should not have been won over to his imaginative creed. 
I had an uneasy, pleasurable sensation all the time, till I was 
to visit him. During those months the chill breath of winter 
gave me a welcoming; the vernal air was balm and inspiration 
to me. The golden sunsets, the silver star of evening, hghted 
me on my way to new hopes and prospects. / was to visit 
Coleridge in the spring. This circumstance was never absent 
from my thoughts, and mingled with all my feelings. I wrote 
to him at the time proposed, and received an answer postponing 
my intended visit for a week or two, but very cordially urging 
me to complete my promise then. This delay did not damp, 
but rather increased my ardour. In the meantime, I went 
to Llangollen Vale, by way of initiating myself in the mysteries 
of natural scenery; and I must say I was enchanted with it. 
I had been reading Coleridge's description of England in his 
fine Ode on the Departing Tear, and I applied it, con amore, 
to the objects before me. That valley was to me (in a manner) 
the cradle of a new existence : in the river that winds through 
it, my spirit was baptised in the waters of Helicon! 

I returned home, and soon after set out on my journey 
with unworn heart and untired feet. My way lay through 
Worcester and Gloucester, and by Upton, where I thought of 
Tom Jones and the adventure of the muff. I remember 



12 My First Acquaintance with Poets 

getting completely wet through one day, and stopping at an 
inn (I think it was at Tewkesbury) where I sat up all night 
to read Paul and Virginia. Sweet were the showers in early 
youth that drenched my body, and sweet the drops of pity 
that fell upon the books I read! I recollect a remark of 
Coleridge's upon this very book, that nothing could shew the 
gross indelicacy of French manners and the entire corruption 
of their imagination more strongly than the behaviour of the 
heroine in the last fatal scene, who turns away from a person 
on board the sinking vessel, that offers to save her life, because 
he has thrown off his clothes to assist him in swimming. Was 
this a time to think of such a circumstance ? I once hinted 
to Wordsworth, as we were sailing in his boat on Grasmere 
lake, that I thought he had borrowed the idea of his Poems 
on the Naming Of Places from the local inscriptions of the 
same kind in Paul and Virginia. He did not own the obligation, 
and stated some distinction without a difference, in defence of 
his claim to originality. Any the slightest variation would 
be sufficient for this purpose in his mind; for whatever he 
added or omitted would inevitably be worth all that any one 
else had done, and contain the marrow of the sentiment. 
I was still two days before the time fixed for my arrival, for 
I had taken care to set out early enough. I stopped these 
two days at Bridgewater, and when I was tired of sauntering 
on the banks of its muddy river, returned to the inn, and read 
Camilla. So have I loitered my life away, reading books, 
looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing 
on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing to 
make me happy; but wanting that, have wanted everything! 
I arrived, and was well received. The country about 
Nether Stowey is beautiful, green and hilly, and near the 
sea-shore. I saw it but the other day, after an interval of 
twenty years, from a hill near Taunton. How was the map 
of my life spread out before me, as the map of the country 
lay at my feet! In the afternoon, Coleridge took me over 
to All-Foxden, a romantic old family-mansion of the St Aubins, 
where Wordsworth lived. It was then in the possession of 
a friend of the poet's, who gave him the free use of it. Somehow 
that period (the time just after the French Revolution) was 
not a time when nothing was given for nothing. The mind 



My First Acquaintance with Poets 13 

opened, and a softness might be perceived coming over the 
heart of individuals, beneath 'the scales that fence' our self- 
interest. Wordsworth himself was from home, but his sister 
kept house, and set before us a frugal repast; and we had 
free access to her brother's poems, the Lyrical Ballads^ which 
were still in manuscript, or in the form of Sybilline Leaves. 
I dipped into a few of these with great satisfaction, and with 
the faith of a novice. I slept that night in an old room with 
blue hangings, and covered with the round-faced family- 
portraits of the age of George I and II, and from the wooded 
declivity of the adjoining park that overlooked my window, 
at the dawn of day, could 

hear the loud stag speak. 

In the outset of life (and particularly at this time I felt it 
so) our imagination has a body to it. We are in a state between 
sleeping and waking, and have indistinct but glorious glimpses 
of strange shapes, and there is always something to come better 
than what we see. As in our dreams the fulness of the blood 
gives warmth and reality to the coinage of the brain, so in 
youth our ideas are clothed, and fed, and pampered with our 
good spirits; we breathe thick with thoughtless happiness, 
the weight of future years presses on the strong pulses of the 
heart, and we repose with undisturbed faith in truth and good. 
As we advance, we exhaust our fund of enjoyment and of 
hope. We are no longer wrapped in lamF s-zvool, lulled in 
Elysium. As we taste the pleasures of life, their spirit 
evaporates, the sense palls; and nothing is left but the 
phantoms, the lifeless shadows of what has been ! 

That morning, as soon as breakfast was over, we strolled 
out into the park, and seating ourselves on the trunk of an 
old ash-tree that stretched along the ground, Coleridge read 
aloud with a sonorous and musical voice, the ballad of Betty 
Foy. I was not critically or sceptically inclined. I saw 
touches of truth and nature, and took the rest for granted. 
But in the Thorn, the Mad Mother, and the Complaint of a 
Poor Indian Woman, I felt that deeper power and pathos 
which have been since acknowledged. 

In spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, 
as the characteristics of this author: and the sense of a new 



14 My First Acquaintance with Poets 

style and a new spirit in poetry came over me. It had to 
me something of the effect that arises from the turning up 
of the fresh soil, or of the first welcome breath of Spring, 

While yet the trembhng year is unconfirmed. 

Coleridge and myself walked back to Stowey that evening, 
and his voice sounded high 

Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, 
Fix'd fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute,' 

as we passed through echoing grove, by fairy stream or 
waterfall, gleaming in the summer moonhght! He lamented 
that Wordsworth was not prone enough to believe in the 
traditional superstitions of the place, and that there was a 
something corporeal, a matter-qf-fact-ness, a clinging to the 
palpable, or often to the petty, in his poetry, in consequence. 
His genius was not a spirit that descended to him through 
the air ; it sprung out of the ground like a flower, or unfolded 
itself from a green spray, on which the gold-finch sang. He 
said, however (if I remember right) that this objection must 
be confined to his descriptive pieces, that his philosophic 
poetry had a grand and comprehensive spirit in it, so that 
his soul seemed to inhabit the universe like a palace, and to 
discover truth by intuition, rather than by deduction. The 
next day Wordsworth arrived from Bristol at Coleridge's 
cottage. I think I see him now. He answered in some degree 
to his friend's description of him, but was more gaunt and 
Don Quixote-like. He was quaintly dressed (according to 
the costume of that unconstrained period) in a brown fustian 
jacket and striped pantaloons. There was something of a roll, 
a lounge in his gait, not unlike his own Peter Bell. There was 
a severe, worn pressure of thought about his temples, a fire 
in his eye (as if he saw something in objects more than the 
outward appearance), an intense high narrow forehead, a 
Roman nose, cheeks furrowed by strong purpose and feeling, 
and a convulsive inclination to laughter about the mouth, a 
good deal at variance with the solemn, stately expression of the 
rest of his face. Chantry's bust wants the marking traits ; but 
he was teazed into making it regular and heavy: Haydon's 
head of him, introduced into the Entrance of Christ into 
Jerusalem^ is the most like his drooping weight of thought 



My First Acquaintance with Poets 15 

and expression. He sat down and talked very naturally 
and freely, with a mixture of clear gushing accents in his 
voice, a deep guttural intonation, and a strong tincture 
of the northern burr, like the crust on wine. He instantly 
began to make havoc of the half of a Cheshire cheese on 
the table, and said triumphantly that 'his marriage with 
experience had not been so unproductive as Mr Southey's in 
teaching him a knowledge of the good things of this hfe.' 
He had been to see the Castle Spectre by Monk Lewis, while 
at Bristol, and described it very well. He said 'it fitted the 
taste of the audience like a glove.' This ad captandum merit 
was however by no means a recommendation of it, according 
to the severe principles of the new school, which reject rather 
than court popular effect Wordsworth, looking out of the 
low, latticed window, said, 'How beautifully the sun sets on 
that yellow bank!' I thought within myself, 'With what 
eyes these poets see nature ! ' and ever after, when I saw the 
sun-set stream upon the objects facing it, conceived I had 
made a discovery, or thanked Mr Wordsworth for having 
made one for me ! We went over to All-Foxden again the 
day following, and Wordsworth read us the story of Peter 
Bell in the open air; and the comment made upon it by his 
face and voice was very different from that of some later 
critics! Whatever might be thought of the poem, 'his face 
was as a book where men might read strange matters,' and 
he announced the fate of his hero in prophetic tones. There 
is a chaunt in the recitation both of Coleridge and Wordsworth, 
which acts as a spell upon the hearer, and disarms the judgment. 
Perhaps they have deceived themselves by making habitual 
use of this ambiguous accompaniment. Coleridge's manner 
is more full, animated, and varied; Wordsworth's more 
equable, sustained, and internal. The one might be termed 
more dramatic, the other more lyrical. Coleridge has told 
me that he himself liked to compose in walking over uneven 
ground, or breaking through the straggling branches of a 
copse-wood ; whereas Wordsworth always wrote (if he could) 
walking up and down a straight gravel-walk, or in some spot 
where the continuity of his verse met with no collateral 
interruption. Returning that same evening, I got into a 
metaphysical argument with Wordsworth, while Coleridge 



i6 My First Acquaintance with Poets 

was explaining the different notes of the nightingale to his 
sister, in which we neither of us succeeded in making ourselves 
perfectly clear and intelligible. Thus I passed three weeks 
at Nether Stowey and in the neighbourhood, generally devoting 
the afternoons to a dehghtful chat in an arbour made of bark 
by the poet's friend Tom Poole, sitting under two fine elm- 
trees, and Hstening to the bees humming round us, while 
we quaffed our flip. It was agreed, among other things, 
that we should make a jaunt down the Bristol-Channel, as 
far as Linton. We set off together on foot, Coleridge, John 
Chester, and I. This Chester was a native of Nether Stowey, 
one of those who were attracted to Coleridge's discourse as 
flies are to honey, or bees in swarming-time to the sound of a 
brass pan. He 'followed in the chase, like a dog who hunts, 
not like one that made up the cry.' He had on a brown 
cloth coat, boots, and corduroy breeches, was low in stature, 
bow-legged, had a drag in his walk like a drover, which he 
assisted by a hazel switch, and kept on a sort of trot by the 
side of Coleridge, like a running footman by a state coach, 
that he might not lose a syllable or sound that fell from 
Coleridge's lips. He told me his private opinion, that Coleridge 
was a wonderful man. He scarcely opened his lips, much less 
offered an opinion the whole way: yet of the three, had I to 
chuse during that journey, I would be John Chester. He 
afterwards followed Coleridge into Germany, where the 
Kantean philosophers were puzzled how to bring him under 
any of their categories. When he sat down at table with his 
idol, John's felicity was complete; Sir Walter Scott's, or 
Mr Blackwood's, when they sat down at the same table with 
the King, was not more so. We passed Dunster on our right, 
a small town between the brow of a hill and the sea. I re- 
member eying it wistfully as it lay below us : contrasted with 
the woody scene around, it looked as clear, as pure, as 
embrowned and ideal as any landscape I have seen since, of 
Gaspar Poussin's or Domenichino's. We had a long day's 
march — (our feet kept time to the echoes of Coleridge's 
tongue) — through Minehead and by the Blue Anchor, and on 
to Linton, which we did not reach till near midnight, and 
where we had some difficulty in making a lodgment. We 
however knocked the people of the house up at last, and we 



My First Acquaintance with Poets 17 

were repaid for our apprehensions and fatigue by some 
excellent rashers of fried bacon and eggs. The view in coming 
along had been splendid. We walked for miles and miles 
on dark brown heaths overlooking the Channel, with the 
Welsh hills beyond, and at times descended into little sheltered 
valleys close by the seaside, with a smuggler's face scowling 
by us, and then had to ascend conical hills with a path winding 
up through a coppice to a barren top, like a monk's shaven 
crown, from one of which I pointed out to Coleridge's notice 
the bare masts of a vessel on the very edge of the horizon 
and within the red-orbed disk of the setting sun, like his 
own spectre-ship in the Ancient Mariner. At Linton the 
character of the sea-coast becomes more marked and rugged. 
There is a place called the Valley of Rocks (I suspect this was 
only the poetical name for it) bedded among precipices 
overhanging the sea, with rocky caverns beneath, into which 
the waves dash, and where the sea-gull for ever wheels its 
screaming flight. On the tops of these are huge stones 
thrown transverse, as if an earthquake had tossed them 
there, and behind these is a fretwork of perpendicular rocks, 
something hke the Gianfs Causeway. A thunder-storm came 
on while we were at the inn, and Coleridge was running out 
bare-headed to enjoy the commotion of the elements in the 
Valley of Rocks, but as if in spite, the clouds only muttered 
a few angry sounds, and let fall a few refreshing drops. 
Coleridge told me that he and Wordsworth were to have 
made this place the scene of a prose-tale, which was to have 
been in the manner of, but far superior to, the Death of Abel, 
but they had relinquished the design. In the morning of the 
second day, we breakfasted luxuriously in an old-fashioned 
parlour, on tea, toast, eggs, and honey, in the very sight of 
the bee-hives from which it had been taken, and a garden 
full of thyme and wild flowers that had produced it. On this 
occasion Coleridge spoke of Virgil's Georgics, but not well. 
I do not think he had much feeling for the classical or elegant. 
It was in this room that we found a little worn-out copy of 
the Seasons, lying in a window-seat, on which Coleridge 
exclaimed, ''That is true fame!' He said Thomson was a 
great poet, rather than a good one; his style was as mere- 
tricious as his thoughts were natural. He spoke of Cowper 



i8 My First Acquaintance with Poets 

as the best modern poet. He said the Lyrical Ballads were 
an experiment about to be tried by him and Wordsworth, 
to see how far the public taste would endure poetry' written 
in a more natural and simple style than had hitherto been 
attempted ; totally discarding the artifices of poetical diction, 
and making use only of such words as had probably been 
common in the most ordinary language since the days of 
Henr)^ II. Seme comparison was introduced between Shake- 
spear and Milton. He said 'he hardly knew which to prefer. 
Shakespear appeared to him a mere stripHng in the art ; he was 
as tall and as strong, with infinitely more activity than Milton, 
but he never appeared to have come to man's estate; or if 
he had, he would not have been a man, but a monster.' He 
spoke with contempt of Gray, and with intolerance of Pope. 
He did not like the versification of the latter. H^ observed 
that 'the ears of these couplet-writers might be charged \\-\xh. 
having short memories, that could not retain the harmony 
of whole passages.' He thought little of Junius as a writer; 
he had a dislike of Dr Johnson; and a much higher opinion 
of Burke as an orator and politician, than of Fox or Pitt. 
He however thought him ver\^ inferior in richness of style 
and imagery- to some of our elder prose-writers, particularly 
Jeremy Taylor. He liked Richardson, but not Fielding; nor 
could I get him to enter into the merits of Caleb Williams'^. 
In short, he was profound and discriminating with, respect 
to those authors whom he liked, and where he gave his 
judgment fair play; capricious, perverse, and prejudiced in 
his antipathies and distastes. We loitered on the 'ribbed 
sea-sands,' in such talk as this, a whole morning, and I recollect 
met with a curious sea-weed, of which John Chester told us 
the country name! A fisherman gave Coleridge an account 
of a boy that had been drowned the day before, and that they 
had tried to save him at the risk of their own lives. He said 



^ He had no idea of pictures, of Claude or Raphael, and at this time 
I had as httle as he. He sometimes gives a striking account at present of 
the Cartoons at Pisa, by Buffamalco and others : of one in particular, where 
Death is seen in the air brandishing his scythe, and the great and mighty of 
the earth shudder at his approach, while the beggars and the wretched 
kneel to him as their dehverer. He would of course understand so broad 
and fine a moral as this at any time. 



My First Acquaintance with Poets 19 

'he did not know how it was that they ventured, but, Sir, we 
have a nature towards one another,' This expression, Coleridge 
remarked to me, was a fine illustration of that theory of 
disinterestedness which I (in common with Butler) had 
adopted. I broached to him an argument of mine to prove 
that likeness was not mere association of ideas. I said that 
the mark in the sand put one in mind of a man's foot, not 
because it was part of a former impression of a man's foot 
(for it was quite new) but because it was like the shape of 
a man's foot. He assented to the justness of this distinction 
(which I have explained at length elsewhere, for the benefit 
of the curious) and John Chester listened; not from any 
interest in the subject, but because he was astonished that 
I should be able to suggest any thing to Coleridge that he did 
not already know. We returned on the third morning, and 
Coleridge remarked the silent cottage-smoke curHng up the 
valleys where, a few evenings before, we had seen the lights 
gleaming through the dark. 

In a day or two after we arrived at Stowey, we set out, 
I on my return home, and he for Germany. It was a Sunday 
morning, and he was to preach that day for Dr Toulmin of 
Taunton. I asked him if he had prepared anything for the 
occasion ? He said he had not even thought of the text, 
but should as soon as we parted. I did not go to hear him, — 
this was a fault, — but we met in the evening at Bridgewater, 
The next day we had a long day's walk to Bristol, and sat 
down, I recollect, by a well-side on the road, to cool ourselves 
and satisfy our thirst, when Coleridge repeated to me some 
descriptive Hnes from his tragedy of Remorse; which I must 
say became his mouth and that occasion better than they, 
some years after, did Mr Elliston's and the Drury-lane 
boards, — 

Oh memory! shield me from the world's poor strife, 
And give those scenes thine everlasting life. 

I saw no more of him for a year or two, during which 
period he had been wandering in the Hartz Forest in Germany ; 
and his return was cometary, meteorous, unHke his setting 
out. It was not till some time after that I knew his friends 
Lamb and Southey. The last always appears to me (as I first 



20 My First Acquaintance with Poets 

saw him) with a common-place book under his arm, and the 
first with a bon-mot in his mouth. It was at Godwin's that 
I met him with Holcroft and Coleridge, where they were 
disputing fiercely which was the best — Man as he was, or man 
as he is to be. 'Give me,' says Lamb, 'man as he is not to be.' 
This saying was the beginning of a friendship between us, 
which I believes still continues. — Enough of this for the 
present. 

But there is matter for another rhyme, 
And I to this may add a second tale. 



ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS I 

An author is bound to write — well or ill, wisely or foolishly : 
it is his trade. But I do not see that he is bound to talk, 
any more than he is bound to dance, or ride, or fence better 
than other people. Reading, study, silence, thought, are 
a bad introduction to loquacity. It would be sooner learnt 
of chambermaids and tapsters. He understands the art and 
mystery of his own profession, which is book-making: what 
right has any one to expect or require him to do more — to 
make a bow gracefully on entering or leaving a room, to make 
love charmingly, or to make a fortune at all? In all things 
there is a division of labour. A lord is no less amorous for 
writing ridiculous love-letters, nor a General less successful 
for wanting wit and honesty. Why then may not a poor 
author say nothing, and yet pass muster? Set him on the 
top of a stage-coach, he will make no figure ; he is mum-chance, 
while the slang-wit flies about as fast as the dust, with the 
crack of the whip and the clatter of the horses' heels: put 
him in a ring of boxers, he is a poor creature— 

And of his port as meek as is a maid. 

Introduce him to a tea-party of milhner's girls, and they are 
ready to split their sides with laughing at him : over his 
bottle, he is dry : in the drawing-room, rude or awkward : 
he is too refined for the vulgar, too clownish for the fashion- 
able : — 'he is one that cannot make a good leg, one that cannot 
eat a mess of broth cleanly, one that cannot ride a horse without 
spur-galling, one that cannot salute a woman, and look on 
her directly': — in courts, in camps, in town and country, he 
is a cypher or a butt : he is good for nothing but a laughing- 
stock or a scare-crow. You can scarcely get a word out of 
him for love or money. He knows nothing. He has no 
notion of pleasure or business, or of what is going on in the 
world; he does not understand cookery (unless he is a doctor 



22 On the Conversation of Authors I 

in divinity) nor surgery, nor chemistry (unless he is a Quidnunc) 
nor mechanics, nor husbandry and tillage (unless he is as great 
an admirer of Tull's Husbandry, and has profited as much 
by it as the philosopher of Botley) — no, nor music, painting, 
the Drama, nor the Fine Arts in general. 

'What the deuce is it then, my good sir, that he does 
understand, or know anything about ? ' 

'BOOKS, VENUS, BOOKS!' 

'What books?' 

'Not receipt-books, Madona, nor account-books, nor books 
of pharmacy, or the veterinary art (they belong to their 
respective callings and handicrafts) but books of liberal taste 
and general knowledge.' 

'What do you mean by that general knowledge which 
implies not a knowledge of things in general, but an ignorance 
(by your own account) of every one in particular : or by that 
liberal taste which scorns the pursuits and acquirements of 
the rest of the world in succession, and is confined exclusively, 
and by way of excellence, to what nobody takes an interest 
in but yourself, and a few idlers like yourself? Is this what 
the critics mean by the belles-lettres, and the study of humanity ?' 

Book-knowledge, in a word, then, is knowledge communi- 
cable by books: and it is general and liberal for this reason, 
that it is intelligible and interesting on the bare suggestion. 
That to which any one feels a romantic attachment, merely 
from finding it in a book, must be interesting in itself: that 
which he instantly forms a lively and entire conception of, 
from seeing a few marks and scratches upon paper, must be 
taken from common nature: that which, the first time you 
meet with it, seizes upon the attention as a curious speculation, 
must exercise the general faculties of the human mind. There 
are certain broader aspects of society and views of things 
common to every subject, and more or less cognizable to every 
mind; and these the scholar treats and founds his claim to 
general attention upon them, without being chargeable with 
pedantry. The minute descriptions of fishing-tackle, of baits 
and flies in Walton's Complete Angler, make that work a great 
favourite with sportsmen : the alloy of an amiable humanity, 
and the modest but touching descriptions of familiar incidents 
and rural objects scattered through it, have made it an equal 



On the Conversation of Authors I 23 

favourite with every reader of taste and feeling. Montaigne's 
Essays, Dilworth's Spelling Book, and Fearn's Treatise on 
Contingent Remainders, are all equally books, but not equally 
adapted for all classes of readers. The two last are of no use 
but to school-masters and lawyers : but the first is a work 
we may recommend to any one to read who has ever thought 
at all, or who would learn to think justly on any subject. 
Persons of different trades and professions — the mechanic, 
the shop-keeper, the medical practitioner, the artist, &c. may 
all have great knowledge and ingenuity in their several 
vocations, the details of which will be very edifying to them- 
selves, and just as incomprehensible to their neighbours : 
but over and above this professional and technical knowledge, 
they must be supposed to have a stock of common sense and 
common feeHng to furnish subjects for common conversation, 
or to give them any pleasure in each other's company. It is 
to this common stock of ideas, spread over the surface, or 
striking its roots into the very centre of society, that the 
popular writer appeals, and not in vain ; for he finds readers. 
It is of this finer essence of wisdom and humanity, 'etherial 
mould, sky-tinctured,' that books of the better sort are made. 
They contain the language of thought. It must happen that, 
in the course of time and the variety of human capacity, 
some persons will have struck out finer observations, reflections, 
and sentiments than others. These they have committed to 
books of memory, have bequeathed as a lasting legacy to 
posterity; and such persons have become standard authors. 
We visit at the shrine, drink in some measure of the inspiration, 
and cannot easily 'breathe in other air less pure, accustomed 
to immortal fruits.' Are we to be blamed for this, because 
the vulgar and ilHterate do not always understand us ? The 
fault is rather in them, who are 'confined and cabin'd in,' 
each in their own particular sphere and compartment of ideas, 
and have not the same refined medium of communication or 
abstracted topics of discourse. Bring a number of literary, 
or of illiterate persons together, perfect strangers to each 
other, and see which party will make the best company. 
'Verily, we have our reward.' We have made our election, 
and have no reason to repent it, if we were wise. But the 
misfortune is, we wish to have all the advantages on one side. 



24 On the Conversation of Authors I 

We grudge, and cannot reconcile it to ourselves, that any one 
'should go about to cozen fortune, without the stamp of 
learning!' We think 'because we are scholars, there shall be 
no more cakes and ale!' We don't know how to account for 
it, that bar-rnaids should gossip, or ladies whisper, or bullies 
roar, or fools laugh, or knaves thrive, without having gone 
through the same course of select study that we have ! This 
vanity is preposterous, and carries its own punishment with 
it. Books are a world in themselves, it is true ; but they are 
not the only world. The world itself is a volume larger than 
all the libraries in it. Learning is a sacred deposit from the 
experience of ages ; but it has not put all future experience 
on the shelf, or debarred the common herd of mankind from 
the use of their hands, tongues, eyes, ears, or understandings. 
Taste is a luxury for the privileged few: but it would be 
hard upon those who have not the same standard of refinement 
in their own minds that we suppose ourselves to have, if this 
should prevent them from having recourse, as usual, to their 
old frolics, coarse jokes, and horse-play, and getting through 
the wear and tear of the world, with such homely sayings and 
shrewd helps as they may. Happy is it, that the mass of 
mankind eat and drink, and sleep, and perform their several 
tasks, and do as they like without us — caring nothing for our 
scribblings, our carpings, and our quibbles; and moving on 
the same, in spite of our fine-spun distinctions, fantastic 
theories, and lines of demarcation, which are like the chalk- 
figures drawn on ball-room floors to be danced out before 
morning! In the field opposite the window where I write 
this, there is a country-girl picking stones : in the one next it, 
there are several poor women weeding the blue and red 
flowers from the corn: farther on, are two boys, tending a 
flock of sheep. What do they know or care about what I am 
writing about them, or ever will — or what would they be the 
better for it, if they did ? Or why need we despise 

The wretched slave, 
Who like a lackey, from the rise to the set, 
Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night 
Sleeps in Elysium ; next day, after dawn, 
Doth rise, and help Hyperion to his horse; 
And follows so the ever-running year 
With profitable labour to his grave? 



On the Conversation of Authors I 25 

Is not this life as sweet as writing Ephemerides ? But we 
put that which flutters the brain idly for a moment, and then 
is heard no more, in competition with nature, which exists 
every where, and lasts always. We not only underrate the 
force of nature, and make too much of art — but we also over- 
rate our own accompHshments and advantages derived from 
art. In the presence of clownish ignorance, or of persons 
without any great pretensions, real or affected, we are very 
much inclined to take upon ourselves, as the virtual representa- 
tives of science, art, and literature. We have a strong itch 
to show off and do the honours of civilization for all the great 
men whose works we have ever read, and whose names our 
auditors have never heard of, as noblemen's lacqueys, in the 
absence of their masters, give themselves airs of superiority 
over every one else. But though we have read Congreve, 
a stage-coachman may be an over-match for us in wit : though 
we are deep-versed in the excellence of Shakspeare's colloquial 
style, a village beldam may outscold us : though we have 
read Machiavel in the original Italian, we may be easily 
outwitted by a clown : and though we have cried our eyes 
out over the New Eloise, a poor shepherd-lad, who hardly 
knows how to spell his own name, may 'tell his tale, under 
the hawthorn in the dale,' and prove a more thriving wooer. 
What then is the advantage we possess over the meanest of 
the mean ? Why this, that we have read Congreve, Shakspeare, 
Machiavel, the New Eloise; — not that we are to have their 
wit, genius, shrewdness, or melting tenderness. 

From speculative pursuits we must be satisfied with 
speculative benefits. From reading, too, we learn to write. 
If we have had the pleasure of studying the highest models 
of perfection in their kind, and can hope to leave any thing 
ourselves, however slight, to be looked upon as a model, or 
even a good copy in its way, we may think ourselves pretty 
well off, without engrossing all the privileges of learning, and 
all the blessings of ignorance into the bargain. 

It has been made a question whether there have not been 
individuals in common life of greater talents and powers of 
mind than the most celebrated writers — whether, for instance, 
such or such a Liverpool merchant, or Manchester manufac- 
turer, was not a more sensible man than Montaigne, of a 



26 On the Conversation of Authors I 

longer reach of understanding than the Viscount of St Albans. 
There is no saying, unless some of these illustrious obscure 
had communicated their important discoveries to the world. 
But then they would have been authors ! — On the other hand, 
there is a set of critics who fall into the contrary error ; and 
suppose that unless the proof of capacity is laid before all the 
world, the capacity itself cannot exist; looking upon all 
those who have not commenced authors, as literally 'stocks 
and stones, and worse than senseless things.' I remember 
trying to convince a person of this class, that a young lady, 
whom he knew something of, the niece of a celebrated authoress, 
had just the same sort of fine tact and ironical turn in conversa- 
tion, that her relative had shown in her writings when young. 
The only answer I could get was an incredulous smile, and the 

observation that when she wrote any thing as good as , 

or , he might think her as clever. I said all I meant 

was, that she had the same family talents, and asked whether 

he thought that if Miss had not been very clever, as a 

mere girl, before she wrote her novels, she would ever have 
written them ? It was all in vain. He still stuck to his text, 
and was convinced that the niece was a little fool compared 
to her aunt at the same age; and if he had known the aunt 
formerly, he would have had just the same opinion of her. 
My friend was one of those who have a settled persuasion that 
it is the book that makes the author, and not the author the 
book. That's a strange opinion for a great philosopher to 
hold. But he wilfully shuts his eyes to the germs and indistinct 
workings of genius, and treats them with supercilious indiffer- 
ence, till they stare him in the face through the press ; and then 
takes cognizance only of the overt acts and pubhshed evidence. 
This is neither a proof of wisdom, nor the way to be wise. 
It is partly pedantry and prejudice, and partly feebleness of 
judgment and want of magnanimity. He dare as little commit 
himself on the character of books, as of individuals, till they 
are stamped by the public. If you show him any work for 
his approbation, he asks, 'Whose is the superscription?' — He 
judges of genius by its shadow, reputation — of the metal by 
the coin. He is just the reverse of another person whom I 

know — for, as G never allows a particle of merit to any 

one till it is acknowledged by the whole world, C withholds 



On the Conversation of Authors I 27 

his tribute of applause from every person, in whom any mortal 
but himself can descry the least glimpse of understanding. 
He would be thought to look farther into a millstone than 
any body else. He would have others see with his eyes, and 
take their opinions from him on trust, in spite of their senses. 
The more obscure and defective the indications of merit, the 
greater his sagacity and candour in being the first to point 
them out. He looks upon what he nicknames a man of genius, 
but as the breath of his nostrils, and the clay in the potter's 
hands. If any such inert, unconscious mass, under the 
fostering care of the modern Prometheus, is kindled into life, 
— begins to see, speak, and move, so as to attract the notice 
of other people, — our jealous patroniser of latent worth in 
that case throws aside, scorns, and hates his own handy-work ; 
and deserts his intellectual offspring from the moment they 
can go alone and shift for themselves. — But to pass on to our 
more immediate subject. 

The conversation of authors is not so good as might be 
imagined : but, such as it is (and with rare exceptions), it is 
better than any other. The proof of which is, that, when you 
are used to it, you cannot put up with any other. That of 
mixed company becomes utterly intolerable — you cannot sit 
out a common tea and card party, at least, if they pretend 
to talk at all. You are obliged in despair to cut all your old 
acquaintance who are not au fait on the prevailing and most 
smartly contested topics, who are not imbued with the high 
gusto of criticism and virtti. You cannot bear to hear a friend 
whom you have not seen for many years, tell at how much a 
yard he sells his laces and tapes, when he means to move 
into his next house, when he heard last from his relations 
in the country, whether trade is alive or dead, or whether 
Mr Such-a-one gets to look old. This sort of neighbourly 
gossip will not go down after the high-raised tone of literary 
conversation. The last may be very absurd, very unsatis- 
factory, and full of turbulence and heart-burnings; but it 
has a zest in it which more ordinary topics of news or family- 
affairs do not supply. Neither will the conversation of what 
we understand by gentlemen and men of fashion, do after 
that of men of letters . It is flat, insipid, stale, and unprofitable, 
in the comparison. They talk about much the same things, 



28 On the Conversation of Authors I 

pictures, poetry, politics, plays ; but they do it worse, and at 
a sort of vapid secondhand. They, in fact, talk out of 
newspapers and magazines, what we write there. They do 
not feel the same interest in the subjects they affect to handle 
with an air of fashionable condescension, nor have they the 
same knowledge of them, if they were ever so much in earnest 
in displaying it. If it were not for the wine and the dessert, 
no author in his senses would accept an invitation to a well- 
dressed dinner-party, except out of pure good-nature and 
unwillingness to disoblige by his refusal. Persons in high 
life talk almost entirely by rote. There are certain established 
modes of address, and certain answers to them expected as 
a matter of course, as a point of etiquette. The studied 
forms of politeness do not give the greatest possible scope 
to an exuberance of wit or fancy. The fear of giving offence 
destroys sincerity, and without sincerity there can be no true 
enjoyment of society, nor unfettered exertion of intellectual 
activity. — Those who have been accustomed to live with the 
great are hardly considered as conversible persons in literary 
society. They are not to be talked with, any more than 
puppets or echos. They have no opinions but what will 
please; and you naturally turn away, as a waste of time 
and words, from attending to a person who just before assented 
to what you said, and whom you find, the moment after, from 
something that unexpectedly or perhaps by design drops from 
him, to be of a totally different way of thinking. This 
bush-fighting is not regarded as fair play among scientific 
men. As fashionable conversation is a sacrifice to politeness, 
so the conversation of low life is nothing but rudeness. They 
contradict you without giving a reason, or if they do, it is 
a very bad one — swear, talk loud, repeat the same thing 
fifty times over, get to calling names, and from words proceed 
to blows. You cannot make companions of servants, or persons 
in an inferior station in life. You may talk to them on matters 
of business, and what they have to do for you (as lords talk to 
bruisers on subjects oi fancy, or country-squires to their grooms 
on horse-racing), but out of that narrow sphere, to any general 
topic, you cannot lead them; the conversation soon flags, 
and you go back to the old question, or are obliged to break 
up the sitting for want of ideas in common. The conversation 



On the Conversation of Authors I 29 

of authors is better than that of most professions. It is better 
than that of lawyers, who talk nothing but double entendre — 
than that of physicians, who talk of the approaching deaths of 
the College, or the marriage of some new practitioner with 
some rich widow— than that of divines, who talk of the last 
place they dined at — than that of University-men, who make 
stale puns, repeat the refuse of the London newspapers, and 
affect an ignorance of Greek and mathematics — it is better 
than that of players, who talk of nothing but the green-room, 
and rehearse the scholar, the wit, or the fine gentleman, like 
a part on the stage — or than that of ladies, who, whatever 
you talk of, think of nothing, and expect you to think of 
nothing, but themselves. It is not easy to keep up a con- 
versation with women in company. It is thought a piece of 
rudeness to differ from them : it is not quite fair to ask them 
a reason for what they say. You are afraid of pressing too 
hard upon them : but where you cannot differ openly and 
unreservedly, you cannot heartily agree. It is not so in 
France. There the women talk of things in general, and reason 
better than the men in this country. They are mistresses of 
the intellectual foils. They are adepts in all the topics. They 
know what is to be said for and against all sorts of questions, 
and are lively and full of mischief into the bargain. They 
are very subtle. They put you to your trumps immediately. 
Your logic is more in requisition even than your gallantry. 
You must argue as well as bow yourself into the good graces 
of these modern Amazons. What a situation for an Englishman 
to be placed in^! 

The fault of literary conversation in general is its too great 
tenaciousness. It fastens upon a subject, and will not let 
it go. It resembles a battle rather than a skirmish, and makes 
a toil of a pleasure. Perhaps it does this from necessity, 
from a consciousness of wanting the more familiar graces, 
the power to sport and trifle, to touch lightly and adorn 
agreeably, every view or turn of a question en -passant, as it 

1 The topics of metaphysical argument having got into female society 
in France, is a proof how much they must have been discussed there generally, 
and how unfounded the charge is which we bring against them of excessive 
thoughtlessness and frivolity. The French (taken all together) are a more 
sensible, reflecting, and better informed people than the English. 



3© On the Conversation of Authors I 

arises. Those who have a reputation to lose are too ambitious 
of shining, to please. 'To excel in conversation,' said an 
ingenious man, 'one must not be always striving to say good 
things : to say one good thing, one must say many bad, and 
more indifferent ones.' This desire to shine without the 
means at hand, often makes men silent : — 

The fear of being silent strikes us dumb. 

A writer who has been accustomed to take a connected view 
of a difficult question, and to work it out gradually in all its 
bearings, may be very deficient in that quickness and ease, 
which men of the world, who are in the habit of hearing a 
variety of opinions, who pick up an observation on one subject, 
and another on another, and who care about none any farther 
than the passing away of an idle hour, usually acquire. An 
author has studied a particular point — he has read, he has 
inquired, he has thought a great deal upon it : he is not 
contented to take it up casually in common with others, 
to throw out a hint, to propose an objection: he will either 
remain silent, uneasy, and dissatisfied, or he will begin at 
the beginning and go through with it to the end. He is for 
taking the whole responsibility upon himself. He would be 
thought to understand the subject better than others, or 
indeed would show that nobody else knows any thing about it. 
There are always three or four points on which the literary 
novice at his first outset in life fancies he can enlighten every 
company, and bear down all opposition: but he is cured of 
this Quixotic and pugnacious spirit, as he goes more into the 
world, where he finds that there are other opinions and other 
pretensions to be adjusted besides his own. When this asperity 
wears off, and a certain scholastic precocity is mellowed down, 
the conversation of men of letters becomes both interesting 
and instructive. Men of the world have no fixed principles, 
no ground-work of thought: mere scholars have too much 
an object, a theory always in view, to which they wrest every 
thing, and not unfrequently, common sense itself. By mixing 
with society, they rub off their hardness of manner, and 
impracticable, offensive singularity, while they retain a greater 
depth and coherence of understanding. There is more to be 
learnt from them than from their books. This was a remark 



On the Conversation of Authors I 31 

of Rousseau's, and it is a very true one. In the confidence 
and unreserve of private intercourse, they are more at liberty 
to say what they think, to put the subject in different and 
opposite points of view, to illustrate it more briefly and pithily 
by familiar expressions, by an appeal to individual character 
and personal knowledge — to bring in the limitation, to obviate 
misconception, to state difficulties on their own side of the 
argument, and answer them as well as they can. This would 
hardly agree with the prudery, and somewhat ostentatious 
claims of authorship. Dr Johnson's conversation in Boswell's 
Life is much better than his published works : and the fragments 
of the opinions of celebrated men, preserved in their letters 
or in anecdotes of them, are justly sought after as invaluable 
for the same reason. For instance, what a fund of sense 
there is in Grimm's Memoirs! We thus get at the essence 
of what is contained in their more laboured productions, 
without the affectation or formality. — Argument, again, is 
the death of conversation, if carried on in a spirit of hostihty : 
but discussion is a pleasant and profitable thing, where you 
advance and defend your opinions as far as you can, and 
admit the truth of what is objected against them with equal 
impartiality; in short, where you do not pretend to set up 
for an oracle, but freely declare what you really know about 
any question, or suggest what has struck you as throwing a 
new light upon it, and let it pass for what it is worth. This 
tone of conversation was well described by Dr Johnson, when 
he said of some party at which he had been present the night 
before — 'We had good talk, sir!' As a general rule, there 
is no conversation worth any thing but between friends, or 
those who agree in the same leading views of a subj ect. Nothing 
was ever learnt by either side in a dispute. You contradict 
one another, will not allow a grain of sense in what your 
adversary advances, are blind to whatever makes against 
yourself, dare not look the question fairly in the face, so that 
you cannot avail yourself even of your real advantages, insist 
most on what you feel to be the weakest points of your argu- 
ment, and get more and more absurd, dogmatical, and violent 
every moment. Disputes for victory generally end to the 
dissatisfaction of all parties ; and the one recorded in Gil Bias 
breaks up just as it ought. I once knew a very ingenious 



32 On the Conversation of Authors I 

man, than whom, to take him in the way of common chit-chat 
or fireside gossip, no one could be more entertaining or rational. 
He would make an apt classical quotation, propose an ex- 
planation of a curious passage in Shakspeare's Venus and 
Adonis, detect a metaphysical error in Locke, would infer the 
volatility of the French character from the chapter in Sterne 
where the Count mistakes the feigned name of Yorick for 
a proof of his being the identical imaginary character in 
Hamlet {Et vous Hes Yorick f) — thus confounding words with 
things twice over — but let a difference of opinion be once 
hitched in, and it was all over with him. His only object 
from that time was to shut out common sense, and to be proof 
against conviction. He would argue the most ridiculous point 
(such as that there were two original languages) for hours 
together, nay, through the horologe. You would not suppose 
it was the same person. He was like an obstinate run-away 
horse, that takes the bit in his mouth, and becomes mischievous 
and unmanageable. He had made up his mind to one thing, 
not to admit a single particle of what any one else said for or 
against him. It was all the difference between a man drunk 
or sober, sane or mad. It is the same when he once gets the 
pen in his hand. He has been trying to prove a contradiction 
in terms for the ten last years of his life, viz. that the Bourbons 
have the same right to the throne of France that the Brunswick 
family have to the throne of England. Many people think 
there is a want of honesty or a want of understanding in this. 
There is neither. But he will persist in an argument to the 
last pinch ; he will yield, in absurdity, to no man ! 

This litigious humour is bad enough: but there is one 
character still worse, that of a person who goes into company, 
not to contradict, but to talk at you. This is the greatest 
nuisance in civilised society. Such a person does not come 
armed to defend himself at all points, but to unsettle, if he 
can, and throw a slur on all your favourite opinions. If he 
has a notion that any one in the room is fond of poetry, he 
immediately volunteers a contemptuous tirade against the 
idle jingle of verse. If he suspects you have a delight in 
pictures, he endeavours, not by fair argument, but by a 
side-wind, to put you out of conceit with so frivolous an art. 
If you have a taste for music, he does not think much good 



On the Conversation of Authors I 33 

is to be done by this tickling of the ears. If you speak in 
praise of a comedy, he does not see the use of wit : if you say 
you have been to a tragedy, he shakes his head at this mockery 
of human misery, and thinks it ought to be prohibited. He 
tries to find out beforehand whatever it is that you take a 
particular pride or pleasure in, that he may annoy your self-love 
in the tenderest point (as if he were probing a wound) and 
make you dissatisfied with yourself and your pursuits for 
several days afterwards. A person might as well make a 
practice of throwing out scandalous aspersions against your 
dearest friends or nearest relations, by way of ingratiating 
himself into your favour. Such ill-timed impertinence is 
'villainous, and shews a pitiful ambition in the fool that 
uses it.' 

The soul of conversation is sympathy. — Authors should 
converse chiefly with authors, and their talk should be of 
books, 'When Greek meets Greek, then comes the tug of 
war.' There is nothing so pedantic as pretending not to be 
pedantic. No man can get above his pursuit in Hfe: it is 
getting above himself, which is impossible. There is a 
Free-masonry in all things. You can only speak to be under- 
stood, but this you cannot be, except by those who are in the 
secret. Hence an argument has been drawn to supersede 
the necessity of conversation altogether ; for it has been said, 
that there is no use in talking to people of sense, who know 
all that you can tell them, nor to fools, who will not be in- 
structed. There is, however, the smallest encouragement to 
proceed, when you are conscious that the more you really 
enter into a subject, the farther you will be from the compre- 
hension of your hearers — and that the more proofs you give 
of any position, the more odd and out-of-the-way they will 

think your notions. C is the 'only person who can talk 

to all sorts of people, on all sorts of subjects, without caring 
a farthing for their understanding one word he says — and he 
talks only for admiration and to be listened to, and accordingly 
the least interruption puts him out. I firmly believe he would 
make just the same impression on half his audiences, if he 
purposely repeated absolute nonsense with the same voice and 
manner and inexhaustible flow of undulating speech! In 
general, wit shines only by reflection. You must take your 



34 On the Conversation of Authors I 

cue from your company — must rise as they rise, and sink as 
they fall. You must see that your good things, your knowing 
allusions, are not flung away, like the pearls in the adage. 
What a check it is to be asked a foolish question ; to find that 
the first principles are not understood! You are thrown on 
your back immediately, the conversation is stopped like a 
country-dance by those who do not know the figure. But 
when a set of adepts, of illuminati, get about a question, it is 
worth while to hear them talk. They may snarl and quarrel 
over it, like dogs; but they pick it bare to the bone, they 
masticate it thoroughly. 



ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS II 

This was the case formerly at L 's — where we used to 

have many lively skirmishes at their Thursday evening parties. 
I doubt whether the Small-coal man's musical parties could 
exceed them. Oh ! for the pen of John Buncle to consecrate 

a petit souvenir to their memory ! — There was L himself, 

the most dehghtful, the most provoking, the most witty and 
sensible of men. He always made the best pun, and the best 
remark in the course of the evening. His serious conversation, 
Hke his serious writing, is his best. No one ever stammered 
out such fine, piquant, deep, eloquent things in half a dozen 
half sentences as he does. His jests scald like tears: and he 
probes a question with a play upon words. What a keen, 
laughing, hair-brained vein of home-felt truth ! What choice 
venom ! How often did we cut into the haunch of letters, 
while we discussed the haunch of mutton on the table ! How 
we skimmed the cream of criticism ! How we got into the heart 
of controversy! How we picked out the marrow of authors! 
'And, in our flowing cups, many a good name and true was 
freshly remembered.' Recollect (most sage and critical reader) 
that in all this I was but a guest ! Need I go over the names ? 
They were but the old everlasting set— Milton and Shakspeare, 
Pope and Dryden, Steele and Addison, Swift and Gay, Fielding, 
Smollet, Sterne, Richardson, Hogarth's prints, Claude's land- 
scapes, the Cartoons at Hampton-court, and all those things, 
that, having once been, must ever be. The Scotch Novels 
had not then been heard of: so we said nothing about them. 
In general, we were hard upon the moderns. The author of 
the Rambler was only tolerated in Boswell's Life of him ; and 
it was as much as any one could do to edge in a word for 

Junius. L could not bear Gil Bias. This was a fault. 

I remember the greatest triumph I ever had was in persuading 
him, after some years' difficulty, that Fielding was better 

3—2 



36 On the Conversation of Authors II 

than Smollet. On one occasion, he was for making out a list 
of persons famous in history that one would wish to see again 
— at the head of whom were Pontius Pilate, Sir Thomas 
Browne, and Dr Faustus — but we black-balled most of his 
list! But with what a gusto would he describe his favourite 
authors, Donne, or Sir Philip Sidney, and call their most 
crabbed passages delicious [ He tried them on his palate as 
epicures taste olives, and his observations had a smack in 
them, like a roughness on the tongue. With what discrimina- 
tion he hinted a defect in what he admired most — as in saying 
that the display of the sumptuous banquet in Paradise 
Regained was not in true keeping, as the simplest fare was 
all that was necessary to tempt the extremity of hunger — and 
stating that Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost were too much 

like married people. He has furnished many a text for C 

to preach upon. There was no fuss or cant about him: nor 
were his sweets or his sours ever diluted with one particle of 

affectation. I cannot say that the party at L 's were 

all of one description. There were honorary members, lay- 
brothers. Wit and good fellowship was the motto inscribed 
over the door. When a stranger came in, it was not asked, 
'Has he written any thing?' — we were above that pedantry; 
but we waited to see what he could do. If he could take a 
hand at piquet, he was welcome to sit down. If a person 
liked any thing, if he took snuff heartily, it was sufficient. 
He would understand, by analogy, the pungency of other 
things, besides Irish blackguard, or Scotch rappee. A character 
was good any where, in a room or on paper. But we abhorred 
insipidity, affectation, and fine gentlemen. There was one of 
our party who never failed to mark ' two for his Nob ' at cribbage 

and he was thought no mean person. This was Ned P , 

and a better fellow in his way breathes not. There was , 

who asserted some incredible matter of fact as a likely paradox 
and settled all controversies by an ipse dixit, ajiat of his will 
hammering out many a hard theory on the anvil of his brain — 
the Baron Munchausen of politics and practical philosophy : — 

there was Captain , who had you at an advantage by 

never understanding you : — there was Jem White, the author 
of Falstaff's Letters, who the other day left this dull world 
to go in search of more kindred spirits, ' turning like the latter 



On the Conversation of Authors II 37 

end of a lover's lute': — there was A , who sometimes 

dropped in, the Will Honeycomb of our set — and Mrs R , 

who being of a quiet turn, loved to hear a noisy debate. 
An utterly uninformed person might have supposed this a 
scene of vulgar confusion and uproar. While the most critical 
question was pending, while the most difficult problem in 

philosophy was solving, P cried out, 'That's game,' and 

M. B. muttered a quotation over the last remains of a veal-pie 
at a side-table. Once, and once only, the literary interest 

overcame the general. For C was riding the high German 

horse, and demonstrating the Categories of the Transcendental 
philosophy to the author of the Road to Ruin; who insisted 
on his knowledge of German, and German metaphysics, having 
read the Critique of Pure Reason in the original. 'My dear 

Mr Holcroft,' said C , in a tone of infinitely provoking 

conciliation, 'you really put me in mind of a sweet pretty 
German girl, about fifteen, that I met with in the Hartz forest 
in Germany — and who one day, as I was reading the Limits 
of the Knowable and the Unknowable, the profoundest of all 
his works, with great attention, came behind my chair, and 
leaning over, said. What, you read Kant? Why, / that am 
German born, don't understand him ! ' This was too much 
to bear, and Holcroft, starting up, called out in no measured 

tone, 'Mr C , you are the most eloquent man I ever met 

with, and the most troublesome with your eloquence ! ' P 

held the cribbage-peg that was to mark him game, suspended 
in his hand; and the whist table was silent for a moment. 
I saw Holcroft down stairs, and, on coming to the landing-place 
in Mitre-court, he stopped me to observe, that 'he thought 

Mr C a very clever man, with a great command of language, 

but that he feared he did not always affix very precise ideas 
to the words he used.' After he was gone, we had our laugh 
out, and went on with the argument on the nature of Reason, 
the Imagination, and the Will. I wish I could find a publisher 
for it : it would make a supplement to the Biographia Literaria 
in a volume and a half octavo. 

Those days are over ! An event, the name of which I wish 
never to mention, broke up our party, like a bomb-shell thrown 
into the room : and now we seldom meet — 

Like angels' visits, short and far between. 



38 On the Conversation of Authors II 

There is no longer the same set of persons, nor of associations. 

L does not Hve where he did. By shifting his abode, his 

notions seem less fixed. He does not wear his old snuff-coloured 
coat and breeches. It looks like an alteration in his style. 
An author and a wit should have a separate costume, a par- 
ticular cloth : he should present something positive and singular 
to the mind, like Mr Douce of the Museum. Our faith in the 
religion of letters will not bear to be taken to pieces, and put 

together again by caprice or accident. L. H goes there 

sometimes. He has a fine vinous spirit about him, and 
tropical blood in his veins: but he is better at his own table. 
He has a great flow of pleasantry and delightful animal 

spirits : but his hits do not tell like L 's ; you cannot 

repeat them the next day. He requires not only to be appre- 
ciated, but to have a select circle of admirers and devotees, 
to feel himself quite at home. He sits at the head of a party 
with great gaiety and grace ; has an elegant manner and turn 
of features; is never at a loss — aliquando siifflaminandus 
erat — has continual sportive sallies of wit or fancy; tells a 
story capitally; mimics an actor, or an acquaintance, to 
admiration; laughs with great glee and good humour at his 
own or other people's jokes; understands the point of an 
equivoque, or an observation immediately; has a taste and 
knowledge of books, of music, of medals; manages an 
argument adroitly; is genteel and gallant, and has a set of 
bye-phrases and quaint allusions always at hand to produce 
a laugh : — if he has a fault, it is that he does not listen so well 
as he speaks, is impatient of interruption, and is fond of being 
looked up to, without considering by whom. I believe, 
however, he has pretty well seen the folly of this. Neither 
is his ready display of personal accomplishment and variety 
of resources an advantage to his writings. They sometimes 
present a desultory and slip-shod appearance, owing to this 
very circumstance. The same things that tell, perhaps, 
best, to a private circle round the fireside, are not always 
intelligible to the public, nor does he take pains to make 
them so. He is too confident and secure of his audience. 
That which may be entertaining enough with the assistance 
of a certain Hveliness of manner, may read very flat on paper, 
because it is abstracted from all the circumstances that had 



On the Conversation of Authors II 39 

set it off to advantage. A writer should recollect that he has 
only to trust to the immediate impression of words, like a 
musician who sings without the accompaniment of an instru- 
ment. There is nothing to help out, or slubber over, the defects 
of the voice in the one case, nor of the style in the other. The 

reader may, if he pleases, get a very good idea of L. H 's 

conversation from a very agreeable paper he has lately 
published, called the Indicator, than which nothing can be 
more happily conceived or executed. 

The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of 
being heard. Authors in general are not good listeners. 
Some of the best talkers are, on this account, the worst 
company; and some who are very indifferent, but very great 
talkers, are as bad. It is sometimes wonderful to see how 
a person, who has been entertaining or tiring a company by 
the hour together, drops his countenance as if he had been 
shot, or had been seized with a sudden lock-jaw, the moment 
any one interposes a single observation. The best converser 
I know is, however, the best listener. I mean Mr Northcote, 
the painter. Painters by their profession are not bound to 
shine in conversation, and they shine the more. He lends 
his ear to an observation, as if you had brought him a piece 
of news, and enters into it with as much avidity and earnest- 
ness, as if it interested himself personally. If he repeats an 
old remark or story, it is with the same freshness and point 
as for the first time. It always arises out of the occasion, 
and has the stamp of originality. There is no parroting of 
himself. His look is a continual, ever-varying history-piece 
of what passes in his mind. His face is as a book. There 
need no marks of interjection or interrogation to what he says. 
His manner is quite picturesque. There is an excess of 
character and naivete that never tires. His thoughts bubble 
up and sparkle, like beads on old wine. The fund of anecdote, 
the collection of curious particulars, is enough to set up any 
common retailer of jests, that dines out every day; but these 
are not strung together like a row of galley-slaves, but are 
always introduced to illustrate some argument or bring out 
some fine distinction of character. The mixture of spleen 
adds to the sharpness of the point, like poisoned arrows. 
Mr Northcote enlarges with enthusiasm on the old painters, 



40 On the Conversation of Authors II 

and tells good things of the new. The only thing he ever 
vexed me in was his liking the Catalogue Raisonne. I had 
almost as soon hear him talk of Titian's pictures (which he 
does with tears in his eyes, and looking just like them) as 
see the originals, and I had rather hear him talk of Sir Joshua's 
than see them. He is the last of that school who knew 
Goldsmith and Johnson. How finely he describes Pope! 
His elegance of mind, his figure, his character were not unlike 
his own. He does not resemble a modern Englishman, but 
puts one in mind of a Roman Cardinal or Spanish Inquisitor. 
I never ate or drank with Mr Northcote; but I have lived 
on his conversation with undiminished relish ever since I can 
remember, — and when I leave it, I come out into the street 
with feelings lighter and more etherial than I have at any 
other time. — One of his tete-d-tetes would at any time make 
an Essay; but he cannot write himself, because he loses 
himself in the connecting passages, is fearful of the effect, 
and wants the habit of bringing his ideas into one focus or 
point of view. A lens is necessary to collect the diverging 
rays, the refracted and broken angular lights of conversation 
on paper. Contradiction is half the battle in talking — the 
being startled by what others say, and having to answer on 
the spot. You have to defend yourself, paragraph by 
paragraph, parenthesis within parenthesis. Perhaps it might 
be supposed that a person who excels in conversation and 
cannot write, would succeed better in dialogue. But the 
stimulus, the immediate irritation, would be wanting; and 
the work would read flatter than ever, from not having the 
very thing it pretended to have. 

Lively sallies and connected discourse are very different 
things. There are many persons of that impatient and restless 
turn of mind, that they cannot wait a moment for a conclusion, 
or follow up the thread of any argument. In the hurry of 
conversation their ideas are somehow huddled into sense; 
but in the intervals of thought, leave a great gap between. 
Montesquieu said, he often lost an idea before he could find 
words for it: yet he dictated, by way of saving time, to an 
amanuensis. This last is, in my opinion, a vile method, 
and a solecism in authorship. Home Tooke, among other 
paradoxes, used to maintain, that no one could write a good 



On the Conversation of Authors II 41 

style who was not in the habit of talking and hearing the sound 
of his own voice. He might as well have said that no one 
could relish a good style without reading it aloud, as we find 
common people do to assist their apprehension. But there 
is a method of trying periods on the ear, or weighing them 
with the scales of the breath, without any articulate sound. 
Authors, as .they write, may be said to 'hear a sound so fine, 
there's nothing lives 'twixt it and silence.' Even musicians 
generally compose in their heads. I agree that no style is 
good, that is not fit to be spoken or read aloud with effect. 
This holds true not only of emphasis and cadence, but also 
with regard to natural idiom and colloquial freedom. Sterne's 
was in this respect the best style that ever was written. You 
fancy that you hear the people talking. For a contrary 
reason, no college-man writes a good style, or understands 
it when written. Fine writing is with him all verbiage and 
monotony — a translation into classical centos or hexameter 
lines. 

That which I have just mentioned is among many instances 
I could give of ingenious absurdities advanced by Mr Tooke 
in the heat and pride of controversy. A person who knew 
him well, and greatly admired his talents, said of him that he 
never (to his recollection) heard him defend an opinion which 
he thought right, or in which he believed him to be himself 
sincere. He indeed provoked his antagonists into the toils 
by the very extravagance of his assertions, and the teasing 
sophistry by which he rendered them plausible. His temper 
was prompter to his skill. He had the manners of a man of 
the world, with great scholastic resources. He flung every 
one else off his guard, and was himself immoveable. I never 
knew any one who did not admit his superiority in this kind 

of warfare. He put a full stop to one of C 's long-winded 

prefatory apologies for his youth and inexperience, by saying 
abruptly, 'Speak up, young man!' and, at another time, 
silenced a learned professor, by desiring an explanation of 
a word which the other frequently used, and which, he said, 
he had been many years trying to get at the meaning of, — the 
copulative Is ! He was the best intellectual fencer of his day. 
He made strange havoc of Fuseli's fantastic hieroglyphics, 
violent humours, and oddity of dialect. — Curran, who was 



42 On the Conversation of Authors II 

sometimes of the same party, was lively and animated in 
convivial conversation, but dull in argument; nay, averse 
to any thing like reasoning or serious observation, and had 
the worst taste I ever knew. His favourite critical topics 
were to abuse Milton's Paradise Lost, and Romeo and Juliet. 
Indeed, he confessed a want of sufficient acquaintance with 
books when he found himself in literary society in London. 
He and Sheridan once dined at John Kemble's with Mrs 
Inchbald and Mary Woolstonecroft, when the discourse almost 
wholly turned on Love, 'from noon to dewy eve, a summer's 
day!' What a subject! What speakers, and what hearers! 
What would I not give to have been there, had I not learned 
it all from the bright eyes of Amaryllis, and may one day 
make a Table-talk of it ! — Peter Pindar was rich in anecdote 
and grotesque humour, and profound in technical knowledge 
both of music, poetry, and painting, but he was gross and 
over-bearing. Wordsworth sometimes talks like a man inspired 
on subjects of poetry (his own out of the question) — Coleridge 
well on every subject, and G — dwin on none. To finish this 

subject — Mrs M 's conversation is as fine-cut as her features, 

and I like to sit in the room with that sort of coronet face. 
What she says leaves a flavour, like fine green tea. H — t's 

is like champaigne, and N 's like anchovy sandwiches. 

H — yd — n's is like a game at trap-ball: L — 's Hke snap- 
dragon: and my own (if I do not mistake the matter) is 
not very much unlike a game at nine-pins!... One source of 
the conversation of authors, is the character of other authors, 
and on that they are rich indeed. What things they 
say! What stories they tell of one another, more par- 
ticularly of their friends! If I durst only give some of 
these confidential communications !... The reader may perhaps 
think the foregoing a specimen of them : — but indeed he is 
mistaken. 

I do not know of any greater impertinence, than for an 
obscure individual to set about pumping a character of 
celebrity. 'Bring him to me,' said a Doctor Tronchin, 
speaking of Rousseau, 'that I may see whether he has any 
thing in him.' Before you can take measure of the capacity 
of others, you ought to be sure that they have not taken 
measure of yours. They may think you a spy on them, and 



On the Conversation of Authors II 43 

may not like their company. If you really want to know 
whether another person can talk well, begin by saying a good 
thing yourself, and you will have a right to look for a rejoinder. 
'The best tennis-players,' says Sir Fopling Flutter, 'make the 
best matches.' 

For wit is like a rest 



Held up at tennis, which men do the best 
With the best players. 

We hear it often said of a great author, or a great actress, 
that they are very stupid people in private. But he was 
a fool that said so. Tell me your company, and Fll tell you 
your manners. In conversation, as in other things, the action 
and reaction should bear a certain proportion to each other. — 
Authors may, in some sense, be looked upon as foreigners, 

who are not naturalized even in their native soil. L once 

came down into the country to see us. He was 'Hke the most 
capricious poet Ovid among the Goths.' The country people 
thought him an oddity, and did not understand his jokes. 
It would be strange if they had; for he did not make any, 
while he staid. But when we crossed the country to 
Oxford, then he spoke a little. He and the old colleges were 
hail-fellow well met; and in the quadrangles, he 'walked 
gowned.' 

There is a character of a gentleman ; so there is a character 
of a scholar, which is no less easily recognised. The one has 
an air of books about him, as the other has of good-breeding. 
The one wears his thoughts as the other does his clothes, 
gracefully; and even if they are a little old-fashioned, they 
are not ridiculous : they have had their day. The gentleman 
shows, by his manner, that he has been used to respect from 
others : the scholar that he lays claim to self-respect and to 
a certain independence of opinion. The one has been 
accustomed to the best company; the other has passed his 
time in cultivating an intimacy with the best authors. There 
is nothing forward or vulgar in the behaviour of the one; 
nothing shrewd or petulant in the observations of the other, 
as if he should astonish the bye-standers, or was astonished 
himself at his own discoveries. Good taste and good sense, 
like common politeness, are, or are supposed to be, matters 



44 On the Conversation of Authors II 

of course. One is distinguished by an appearance of marked 
attention to every one present ; the other manifests an habitual 
air of abstraction and absence of mind. The one is not an 
upstart with all the self-important airs of the founder of his 
own fortune; nor the other a self-taught man, with the 
repulsive self-sufhciency which arises from an ignorance of 
what hundreds have known before him. We must excuse 
perhaps a little conscious family-pride in the one, and a little 
harmless pedantry in the other. — As there is a class of the 
first character which sinks into the mere gentleman, that is, 
which has nothing but this sense of respectability and propriety 
to support it — so the character of a scholar not unfrequently 
dwindles down into the shadow of a shade, till nothing is left 
of it but the mere book-worm. There is often something 
amiable as well as enviable in this last character. I know 
one such instance, at least. The person I mean has an admira- 
tion for learning, if he is only dazzled by its light. He lives 
among old authors, if he does not enter much into their spirit. 
He handles the covers, and turns over the page, and is famihar 
with the names and dates. He is busy and self-involved. 
He hangs like a film and cobweb upon letters, or is like the 
dust upon the outside of knowledge, which should not be 
rudely brushed aside. He follows learning as its shadow; 
but as such, he is respectable. He browzes on the husk and 
leaves of books, as the young fawn browzes on the bark and 
leaves of trees. Such a one lives all his life in a dream of 
learning, and has never once had his sleep broken by a real 
sense of things. He believes implicitly in genius, truth, 
virtue, liberty, because he finds the names of these things in 
books. He thinks that love and friendship are the finest 
things imaginable, both in practice and theory. The legend 
of good women is to him no fiction. When he steals from the 
twilight of his cell, the scene breaks upon him like an illuminated 
missal, and all the people he sees are but so many figures in 
a camera ohscura. He reads the world, like a favourite volume, 
only to find beauties in it, or like an edition of some old work 
which he is preparing for the press, only to make emendations 
in it, and correct the errors that have inadvertently sHpt in. 
He and his dog Tray are much the same honest, simple-hearted, 
faithful, affectionate creatures — if Tray could but read! His 



On the Conversation of Authors II 45 

mind cannot take the impression of vice: but the gentleness 
of his nature turns gall to milk. He would not hurt a fly. 
He draws the picture of mankind from the guileless simplicity 
of his own heart : and when he dies, his spirit will take its 
smiling leave, without having ever had an ill thought of 
others, or the consciousness of one in itself! 



OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO 
HAVE SEEN 

Come like shadows — so depart. 

B it was, I think, who suggested this subject, as well 

as the defence of Guy Faux, which I urged him to execute. 
As, however, he would undertake neither, I suppose I must 
do both — a task for which he would have been much fitter, 
no less from the temerity than the felicity of his pen — 

Never so sure our rapture to create 

As when it touch' d the brink of all we hate. 

Compared with him I shall, I fear, make but a common-place 
piece of business of it; but I should be loth the idea was 
entirely lost, and besides I may avail myself of some hints 
of his in the progress of it. I am sometimes, I suspect, a 
better reporter of the ideas of other people than expounder of 
my own. I pursue the one too far into paradox or mysticism ; 
the others I am not bound to follow farther than I like, or 
than seems fair and reasonable. 

On the question being started, A said, 'I suppose the 

two first persons you would choose to see would be the two 
greatest names in English literature, Sir Isaac Newton and 

Mr Locke?' In this A , as usual, reckoned without his 

host. Every one burst out a laughing at the expression of 

B 's face, in which impatience was restrained by courtesy. 

'Yes, the greatest names,' he stammered out hastily, 'but 
they were not persons — not persons.' — 'Not persons?' said 

A , looking wise and foolish at the same time, afraid his 

triumph might be premature. 'That is,' rejoined B , 

'not characters, you know. By Mr Locke and Sir Isaac 
Newton, you mean the Essay on the Human Understanding, 
and the Principia, which we have to this day. Beyond their 
contents there is nothing personally interesting in the men. 
But what we want to see any one bodily for, is when there is 
something peculiar, striking in the individuals, more than we 
can learn from their writings, and yet are curious to know. 



Of Persons one would wish to have seen 47 

I dare say Locke and Newton were very like Kneller's portraits 
of them. But who could paint Shakspeare?' — 'Ay,' retorted 

A , ' there it is ; then I suppose you would prefer seeing him 

and Milton instead?' — 'No,' said B , 'neither. I have 

seen so much of Shakspeare on the stage and on book-stalls, 
in frontispieces and on mantle-pieces, that I am quite tired 
of the everlasting repetition: and as to Milton's face, the 
impressions that have come down to us of it I do not like; 
it is too starched and puritanical; and I should be afraid 
of losing some of the manna of his poetry in the leaven of 
his countenance and the precisian's band and gown.' — 'I shall 

guess no more,' said A . 'Who is it, then, you would like 

to see "in his habit as he lived," if you had your choice of the 

whole range of English literature?' B then named 

Sir Thomas Brown and Fulke Greville, the friend of Sir Phihp 
Sidney, as the two worthies whom he should feel the greatest 
pleasure to encounter on the floor of his apartment in their 
night-gown and slippers, and to exchange friendly greeting 

with them. At this A laughed outright, and conceived 

B was jesting with him; but as no one followed his 

example, he thought there might be something in it, and 
waited for an explanation in a state of whimsical suspense. 

B then (as well as I can remember a conversation that 

passed twenty years ago — how time slips !) went on as follows. 
'The reason why I pitch upon these two authors is, that their 
writings are riddles, and they themselves the most mysterious 
of personages. They resemble the soothsayers of old, who 
dealt in dark hints and doubtful oracles; and I should like 
to ask them the meaning of what no mortal but themselves, 
I should suppose, can fathom. There is Dr Johnson, I have 
no curiosity, no strange uncertainty about him : he and Boswell 
together have pretty well let me into the secret of what passed 
through his mind. He and other writers like him are suffi- 
ciently explicit : my friends, whose repose I should be tempted 
to disturb, (were it in my power) are imphcit, inextricable, 
inscrutable. 

And call up him who left half-told 

The story of Cambuscan bold. 

'When I look at that obscure but gorgeous prose-composi- 
tion (the Urn-burial) I seem to myself to look into a deep abyss, 



48 Of Persons one would wish to have seen 

at the bottom of which are hid pearls and rich treasure ; or it 
is like a stately labyrinth of doubt and withering speculation, 
and I would invoke the spirit of the author to lead me through 
it. Besides, who would not be curious to see the lineaments 
of a man who, having himself been twice married, wished 
that mankind were propagated like trees! As to Fulke 
Greville, he is like nothing but one of his own "Prologues 
spoken by the ghost of an old king of Ormus," a truly 
formidable and inviting personage : his style is apocalyptical, 
cabalistical, a knot worthy of such an apparition to untie; 
and for the unravelHng a passage or two, I would stand the 
brunt of an encounter with so portentous a commentator!' — 

'I am afraid in that case,' said A , 'that if the mystery 

were once cleared up, the merit might be lost'; — and turning 

to me, whispered a friendly apprehension, that while B 

continued to admire these old crabbed authors, he would 
never become a popular writer, Dr Donne was mentioned 
as a writer of the same period, with a very interesting coun- 
tenance, whose history was singular, and whose meaning was 
often quite as uncomeatable, without a personal citation from 
the dead, as that of any of his contemporaries. The volume 
was produced; and while some one was expatiating on the 
exquisite simplicity and beauty of the portrait prefixed to 

the old edition, A got hold of the poetry, and exclaiming 

'What have we here?' read the following: — 

Here lies a She-Sun and a He-Moon here, 
She gives the best light to his sphere, 
Or each is both and all, and so 
They unto one another nothing owe. 

There was no resisting this, till B , seizing the volume, 

turned to the beautiful 'Lines to his Mistress,' dissuading her 
from accompanying him abroad, and read them with suffused 
features and a faltering tongue. 

By our first strange and fatal interview, 

By all desires which thereof did ensue, 

By our long starving hopes, by that remorse 

Which my words' masculine persuasive force 

Begot in thee, and by the memory 

Of hurts, which spies and rivals threaten' d me, 

I calmly beg. But by thy father's wrath, 

By all pains which want and divorcement hath, 



Of Persons one would wish to have seen 49 

I conjure thee ; and all the oaths which I 

And thou have sworn to seal joint constancy 

Here I unswear, and overswear them thus, 

Thou shalt not love by ways so dangerous. 

Temper, oh fair Love! love's impetuous rage, 

Be my true mistress still, not my feign'd Page; 

I'll go, and, by thy kind leave, leave behind 

Thee, only worthy to nurse in my mind. 

Thirst to come back; oh, if thou die before, 

My soul from other lands to thee shall soar. 

Thy (else Almighty) beauty cannot move 

Rage from the seas, nor thy love teach them love, 

Nor tame wild Boreas' harshness ; thou hast read 

How roughly he in pieces shivered 

Fair Orithea, whom he swore he lov'd. 

Fall ill or good, 'tis madness to have prov'd 

Dangers unurg'd: Feed on this flattery, 

That absent lovers one in th' other be. 

Dissemble nothing, not a boy, nor change 

Thy body's habit, nor mind; be not strange 

To thyself only. All will spy in thy face 

A blushing, womanly, discovering grace. 

Richly cloth'd apes are called apes, and as soon 

Eclips'd as bright we call the moon the moon. 

Men of France, changeable cameleons, 

Spittles of diseases, shops of fashions, 

Love's fuellers, and the rightest company 

Of players, which upon the world's stage be. 

Will quickly know thee....O stay here! for, for thee 

England is only a worthy gallery. 

To walk in expectation; till from thence 

Our greatest King call thee to his presence. 

When I am gone, dream me some happiness, 

Nor let thy looks our long hid love confess. 

Nor praise, nor dispraise me; nor bless, nor curse 

Openly love's force, nor in bed fright thy nurse 

With midnight startings, crying out, Oh, oh, 

Nurse, oh, my love is slain, I saw him go 

O'er the white Alps alone; I saw him, I, 

Assail'd, fight, taken, stabb'd, bleed, fall, and die. 

Augur me better chance, except dread Jove 

Think it enough for me to have had thy love. 

Some one then inquired of B if we could not see from 

the window the Temple-walk in which Chaucer used to take 
his exercise; and on his name being put to the vote, I was 
pleased to find that there was a general sensation in his favour 
in all but A , who said something about the ruggedness 



50 Of Persons one would wish to have seen 

of the metre, and even objected to the quaintness of the 
orthography. I was vexed at this superficial gloss, per- 
tinaciously reducing every thing to its own trite level, and 
asked 'if he did not think it would be worth while to scan the 
eye that had first greeted the Muse in that dim twilight and 
early dawn of English literature; to see the head, round 
which the visions of fancy must have played like gleams of 
inspiration or a sudden glory; to watch those lips that 
"lisped in numbers, for the numbers came" — as by a miracle, 
or as if the dumb should speak ? Nor was it alone that he 
had been the first to tune his native tongue (however imper- 
fectly to modern ears) ; but he was himself a noble, manly 
character, standing before his age and striving to advance it ; 
a pleasant humourist withal, who has not only handed down 
to us the living manners of his time, but had, no doubt, store 
of curious and quaint devices, and would make as hearty 
a companion as Mine Host of Tabard. His interview with 
Petrarch is fraught with interest. Yet I would rather have 
seen Chaucer in company with the author of the Decameron, 
and have heard them exchange their best stories together, 
the Squire's Tale against the Story of the Falcon, the Wife of 
Bath's Prologue against the Adventures of Friar Albert. How 
fine to see the high mysterious brow which learning then 
wore, relieved by the gay, familiar tone of men of the world, 
and by the courtesies of genius. Surely, the thoughts and 
feelings which passed through the minds of these great revivers 
of learning, these Cadmuses who sowed the teeth of letters, 
must have stamped an expression on their features, as different 
from the moderns as their books, and well worth the perusal. 
Dante,' I continued, 'is as interesting a person as his own 
Ugolino, one whose lineaments curiosity would as eagerly 
devour in order to penetrate his spirit, and the only one of 
the Italian poets I should care much to see. There is a fine 
portrait of Ariosto by no less a hand than Titian's; light, 
Moorish, spirited, but not answering our idea. The same 
artist's large colossal profile of Peter Aretine is the only 
likeness of the kind that has the eflFect of conversing with 
"the mighty dead," and this is truly spectral, ghastly, 

necromantic' B put it to me if I should like to see 

Spenser as well as Chaucer ; and I answered without hesitation, 



Of Persons one would wish to have seen 51 

'No; for that his beauties were ideal, visionary, not palpable 
or personal, and therefore connected with less curiosity about 
the man. His poetry was the essence of romance, a very 
halo round the bright orb of fancy; and the bringing in the 
individual might dissolve the charm. No tones of voice 
could come up to the mellifluous cadence of his verse ; no form 
but of a winged angel could vie with the airy shapes he has 
described. He was (to our apprehensions) rather "a creature 
of the element, that lived in the rainbow and played in the 
plighted clouds," than an ordinary mortal. Or if he did 
appear, I should wish it to be as a mere vision, like one of 
his own pageants, and that he should pass by unquestioned 
like a dream or sound — 

That was Arion crown' d: 

So went he playing on the wat'ry plain ! 

Captain C. muttered something about Columbus, and 
M. C. hinted at the Wandering Jew; but the last was set 
aside as spurious, and the first made over to the New World. 

'I should like,' said Miss D , 'to have seen Pope talking 

with Patty Blount; and I have seen Goldsmith.' Every one 

turned round to look at Miss D , as if by so doing they 

too could get a sight of Goldsmith. 

'Where,' asked a harsh croaking voice, 'was Dr Johnson 
in the years 1745-6? He did not write any thing that we 
know of, nor is there any account of him in Boswell during 
those two years. Was he in Scotland with the Pretender? 
He seems to have passed through the scenes in the Highlands 
in company with Boswell many years after "with lack-lustre 
eye," yet as if they were familiar to him, or associated in his 
mind with interests that he durst not explain. If so, it would 
be an additional reason for my liking him; and I would 
give something to have seen him seated in the tent with the 
youthful Majesty of Britain, and penning the Proclamation 
to all true subjects and adherents of the legitimate Govern- 
ment.' 

'I thought,' said A , turning short round upon B , 

'that you of the Lake School did not like Pope?'— 'Not like 
Pope! My dear sir, you must be under a mistake — I can 
read him over and over for ever!' — *Why certainly, the 



52 Of Persons one would wish to have seen 

"Essay on Man" must be allowed to be a master-piece.' — 'It 
may be so, but I seldom look into it.' — ' Oh ! then it's his Satires 
you admire?' — 'No, not his Satires, but his friendly Epistles 
and his compliments.'— 'Compliments ! I did not know he ever 

made any.' — 'The finest,' said B , 'that were ever paid by 

the wit of man. Each of them is worth an estate for life — nay, 
is an immortality. There is that superb one to Lord Cornbury: 

Despise low joys, low gains; 

Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains ; 

Be virtuous, and be happy for your pains. 

'Was there ever more artful insinuation of idolatrous praise? 
And then that noble apotheosis of his friend Lord Mansfield 
(however little deserved), when, speaking of the House of 
Lords, he adds — 

Conspicuous scene! another yet is nigh, 
(More silent far) where kings and poets lie; 
Where Murray (long enough his country's pride) 
Shall be no more than Tally or than Hyde ! 

'And with what a fine turn of indignant fiattery he addresses 
Lord Bolingbroke — 

Why rail they then, if but one wreath of mine. 
Oh! all accomphsh'd St John, deck thy shrine? 

'Or turn,' continued B , with a slight hectic on his cheek 

and his eye glistening, 'to his list of early friends: 

But why then publish.^ Granville the polite. 
And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write; 
Well-natured Garth inflamed with early praise. 
And Congreve loved and Swift endured my lays : 
The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield read, 
Ev'n mitred Rochester would nod the head; 
And St John's self (great Dryden's friend before) 
Received with open arms one poet more. 
Happy my studies, if by these approved ! 
Happier their author, if by these beloved ! 
From these the world will judge of men and books. 
Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cooks. 

Here his voice totally failed him, and throwing down the 
book, he said, 'Do you think I would not wish to have been 
friends with such a man as this ? ' 



Of Persons one would wish to have seen 53 

'What say you to Dryden ?' — 'He rather made a show 
of himself, and courted popularity in that lowest temple of 
Fame, a coffee-house, so as in som^ measure to vulgarize 
one's idea of him. Pope, on the contrary, reached the very 
beau ideal of what a poet's life should be ; and his fame while 
living seemed to be an emanation from that which was to 
circle his name after death. He was so far enviable (and one 
would feel proud to have witnessed the rare spectacle in him) 
that he was almost the only poet and man of genius who met 
with his reward on this side of the tomb, who realized in 
friends, fortune, the esteem of the world, the most sanguine 
hopes of a youthful ambition, and who found that sort of 
patronage from the great during his lifetime which they 
would be thought anxious to bestow upon him after his death. 
Read Gay's verses to him on his supposed return from Greece, 
after his translation of Homer was finished, and say if you 
would not gladly join the bright procession that welcomed 
him home, or see it once more land at Whitehall-stairs.' — 

'Still,' said Miss D , 'I would rather have seen him talking 

with Patty Blount, or riding by in a coronet-coach with 
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu!' 

E , who was deep in a game of piquet at the other 

end of the room, whispered to M. C. to ask if Junius would 
not be a fit person to invoke from the dead. 'Yes,' said 
B , 'provided he would agree to lay aside his mask.' 

We were now at a stand for a short time, when Fielding 
was mentioned as a candidate: only one, however, seconded 
the proposition. 'Richardson?' — 'By all means, but only to 
look at him through the glass-door of his back-shop, hard 
at work upon one of his novels (the most extraordinary 
contrast that ever was presented between an author and his 
works), but not to let him come behind his counter lest he 
should want you to turn customer, nor to go upstairs with 
him, lest he should offer to read the first manuscript of Sir 
Charles Grandison, which was originally written in eight and 
twenty volumes octavo, or get out the letters of his female 
correspondents, to prove that Joseph Andrews was low.' 

There was but one statesman in the whole of English 
history that any one expressed the least desire to see — Oliver 
Cromwell, with his fine, frank, rough, pimply face, and wily 



54 Of Persons one would wish to have seen 

policy; — and one enthusiast, John Bunyan, the immortal 
author of the Pilgrim's Progress. It seemed that if he came 
into the room, dreams would follow him, and that each person 
would nod under his golden cloud, 'nigh-sphered in Heaven,' 
a canopy as strange and stately as any in Homer. 

Of all persons near our own time, Garrick's name was 
received with the greatest enthusiasm, who was proposed by 

J. F . He presently superseded both Hogarth and Handel, 

who had been talked of, but then it was on condition that 
he should act in tragedy and comedy, in the play and the 
farce, Lear and Wildair and Abel Drugger. What a sight for 
sore eyes that would be ! Who would not part with a year's 
income at least, almost with a year of his natural life, to be 
present at it? Besides, as he could not act alone, and 
recitations are unsatisfactory things, what a troop he must 
bring with him — the silver-tongued Barry, and Quin, and 
Shuter and Weston, and Mrs Clive and Mrs Pritchard, of whom 
I have heard my father speak as so great a favourite when 
he was young! This would indeed be a revival of the dead, 
the restoring of art; and so much the more desirable, as 
such is the lurking scepticism mingled with our overstrained 
admiration of past excellence, that though we have the speeches 
of Burke, the portraits of Reynolds, the writings of Goldsmith, 
and the conversation of Johnson, to show what people could 
do at that period, and to confirm the universal testimony 
to the merits of Garrick; yet, as it was before our time, we 
have our misgivings, as if he was probably after all little 
better than a Bartlemy-f air actor, dressed out to play Macbeth 
in a scarlet coat and laced cocked-hat. For one, I should 
like to have seen and heard with my own eyes and ears. 
Certainly, by all accounts, if any one was ever moved by the 
true histrionic cestus, it was Garrick. When he followed the 
Ghost in Hamlet, he did not drop the sword, as most actors 
do behind the scenes, but kept the point raised the whole 
way round, so fully was he possessed with the idea, or so 
anxious not to lose sight of his part for a moment. Once 

at a splendid dinner-party at Lord 's, they suddenly 

missed Garrick, and could not imagine what was become of 
him, till they were drawn to the window by the convulsive 
screams and peals of laughter of a young negro boy, who 



Of Persons one would wish to have seen 55 

was rolling on the ground in an ecstacy of delight to see Garrick 
mimicing a turkey-cock in the court-yard, with his coat-tail 
stuck out behind, and in a seeming flutter of feathered rage 
and pride. Of our party only two persons present had seen 
the British Roscius; and they seemed as wilhng as the rest 
to renew their acquaintance with their old favourite. 

We were interrupted in the hey-day and mid-career of 
this fanciful speculation, by a grumbler in a corner, who declared 
it was a shame to make all this rout about a mere player and 
farce-writer, to the neglect and exclusion of the fine old 
dramatists, the contemporaries and rivals of Shakespeare. 

B said he had anticipated this objection when he had 

named the author of Mustapha and Alaham ; and out of caprice 
insisted upon keeping him to represent the set, in preference 
to the wild hair-brained enthusiast Kit Marlowe; to the 
sexton of St Ann's, Webster, with his melancholy yew-trees 
and death's-heads; to Deckar, who was but a garrulous 
proser; to the voluminous Heywood; and even to Beaumont 
and Fletcher, whom we might offend by complimenting the 
wrong author on their joint productions. Lord Brook, on 
the contrary, stood quite by himself, or in Cowley's words, 
was 'a vast species alone.' Some one hinted at the circum- 
stance of his being a lord, which rather startled B , but 

he said a ghost would perhaps dispense with strict etiquette, 
on being regularly addressed by his title. Ben Jonson divided 
our suffrages pretty equally. Some were afraid he would 
begin to traduce Shakspeare, who was not present to defend 
himself. 'If he grows disagreeable,' it was whispered aloud, 

'there is G can match him.' At length, his romantic visit 

to Drummond of Hawthornden was mentioned, and turned 
the scale in his favour. 

B inquired if there was any one that was hanged 

that I would choose to mention ? And I answered, Eugene 
Aram^. The name of the 'Admirable Crichton' was suddenly 
started as a splendid example of waste talents, so different 
from the generality of his countrymen. This choice was 
mightily approved by a North-Briton present, who declared 
himself descended from that prodigy of learning and accom- 
plishment, and said he had family-plate in his possession as 
^ See Newgate Calendar for 1758. 



56 Of Persons one would wish to have seen 

vouchers for the fact, with the initials A. C. — Admirable 

CrichtonI H laughed or rather roared as heartily at 

this as I should think he has done for many years. 

The last-named Mitre-courtier^ then wished to know 
whether there were any metaphysicians to whom one might 
be tempted to apply the wizard spell? I replied, there were 
only six in modern times deserving the name — Hobbes, 
Berkeley, Butler, Hartley, Hume, Leibnitz; and perhaps 
Jonathan Edwards, a Massachusets man^. As to the French, 
who talked fluently of having created this science, there was 
not a title in any of their writings, that was not to be found 
literally in the authors I had mentioned. [Home Tooke, who 
might have a claim to come in under the head of Grammar, 
was still living.] None of these names seemed to excite 
much interest, and I did not plead for the re-appearance of 
those who might be thought best fitted by the abstracted 
nature of their studies for their present spiritual and disem- 
bodied state, and who, even while on this living stage, were 

nearly divested of common flesh and blood. As A with 

an uneasy fidgetty face was about to put some question 
about Mr Locke and Dugald Stewart, he was prevented by 

M. C. who observed, 'If J was here, he would undoubtedly 

be for having up those profound and redoubted scholiasts, 
Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus.' I said this might be 
fair enough in him who had read or fancied he had read the 
original works, but I did not see how we could have any 
right to call up these authors to give an account of themselves 
in person, till we had looked into their writings. 

By this time it should seem that some rumour of our 
whimsical deliberation had got wind, and had disturbed the 
irritabile genus in their shadowy abodes, for we received 

^ B at this time occupied chambers in Mitre Court, Fleet Street. 

2 Lord Bacon is not included in this list, nor do I know where he should 
come in. It is not easy to make room for him and his reputation together. 
This great and celebrated man in some of his works recommends it to pour 
a bottle of claret into the ground of a morning, and to stand over it, 
inhaling the perfumes. So he sometimes enriched the dry and barren soil 
of speculation with the fine aromatic spirit of his genius. His ' Essays ' 
and his 'Advancement of Learning' are works of vast depth and scope of 
observation. The last, though it contains no positive discoveries, is a noble 
chart of the human intellect, and a guide to all future inquirers. 



Of Persons one would wish to have seen 57 

messages from several candidates that we had just been 
thinking of. Gray dedined our invitation, though he had not 
yet been asked: Gay offered to come and bring in his hand 
the Duchess of Bolton, the original Polly : Steele and Addison 
left their cards as Captain Sentry and Sir Roger de Coverley: 
Swift came in and sat down without speaking a word, and 
quitted the room as abruptly: Otway and Chatterton were 
seen lingering on the opposite side of the Styx, but could 
not muster enough between them to pay Charon his fare: 
Thomson fell asleep in the boat, and was rowed back again — 
and Burns sent a low fellow, one John Barleycorn, an old 
companion of his who had conducted him to the other world, 
to say that he had during his lifetime been drawn out of his 
retirement as a show, only to be made an exciseman of, and 
that he would rather remain where he was. He desired, 
however, to shake hands by his representative — the hand, 
thus held out, was in a burning fever, and shook prodigiously. 
The room was hung round with several portraits of eminent 
painters. While we were debating whether we should demand 
speech with these masters of mute eloquence, whose features 
were so familiar to us, it seemed that all at once they glided 
from their frames, and seated themselves at some little distance 
from us. There was Leonardo with his majestic beard and 
watchful eye, having a bust of Archimedes before him ; next 
him was Raphael's graceful head turned round to the For- 
narina ; and on his other side was Lucretia Borgia, with calm, 
golden locks; Michael Angelo had placed the model of St 
Peter's on the table before him ; Corregio had an angel at his 
side ; Titian was seated with his Mistress between himself and 
Giorgioni; Guido was accompanied by his own Aurora, who 
took a dice-box from him ; Claude held a mirror in his hand ; 
Rubens patted a beautiful panther (led in by a satyr) on the 
head; Vandyke appeared as his own Paris, and Rembrandt 
was hid under furs, gold chains and jewels, which Sir Joshua 
eyed closely, holding his hand so as to shade his forehead. 
Not a word was spoken; and as we rose to do them homage, 
they still presented the same surface to the view. Not being 
bond-fide representations of living people, we got rid of the 
splendid apparitions by signs and dumb show. As soon as 
they had melted into thin air, there was a loud noise at the 



58 Of Persons one would wish to have seen 

outer door, and we found it was Giotto, Cimabue, and 
Ghirlandaio, who had been raised from the dead by their 
earnest desire to see their illustrious successors — 

Whose names on earth 
In Fame's eternal records live for ayel 
Finding them gone, they had no ambition to be seen after 

them, and mournfully withdrew. 'Egad!' said B , 'those 

are the very fellows I should like to have had some talk with, 
to know how they could see to paint when all was dark around 
them ? ' 

'But shall we have nothing to say,' interrogated G. J , 

'to the Legend of Good Women?' — 'Name, name, Mr J ,' 

cried H in a boisterous tone of friendly exultation, 'name 

as many as you please, without reserve or fear of molestation ! ' 

J was perplexed between so many amiable recollections, 

that the name of the lady of his choice expired in a pensive 

whiff of his pipe; and B impatiently declared for the 

Duchess of Newcastle. Mrs Hutchinson was no sooner 
mentioned, than she carried the day from the Duchess. We 
were the less solicitous on this subject of filling up the post- 
humous lists of Good Women, as there was already one in 
the room as good, as sensible, and in all respects as exemplary, 
as the best of them could be for their lives ! ' I should like 
vastly to have seen Ninon de I'Enclos, ' said that incomparable 
person; and this immediately put us in mind that we had 
neglected to pay honour due to our friends on the other side 
of the Channel : Voltaire, the patriarch of levity, and Rousseau, 
the father of sentiment, Montaigne and Rabelais (great in 
wisdom and in wit), Moliere and that illustrious group that 
are collected round him (in the print of that subject) to hear 
him read his comedy of the Tartuffe at the house of Ninon; 
Racine, La Fontaine, Rochefoucault, St Evremont, &c. 

'There is one person,' said a shrill, querulous voice, 'I would 
rather see than all these — Don Quixote!' 

'Come, come!' said H ; 'I thought we should have 

no heroes, real or fabulous. What say you, Mr B ? 

Are you for eking out your shadowy list with such names 
as Alexander, Julius Caesar, Tamerlane, or Ghengis Khan ? ' 

— 'Excuse me,' said B , 'on the subject of characters in 

active life, plotters and disturbers of the world, I have a crotchet 



Of Persons one would wish to have seen 59 

of my own, which I beg leave to reserve.' — 'No, no! come, 
out with your worthies!' — 'What do you think of Guy Faux 

and Judas Iscariot?' H turned an eye upon him like 

a wild Indian, but cordial and full of smothered glee. 'Your 

most exquisite reason!' was echoed on all sides; and A 

thought that B had now fairly entangled himself. 'Why, 

I cannot but think,' retorted he of the wistful countenance, 
'that Guy Faux, that poor fluttering annual scare-crow of 
straw and rags, is an ill-used gentleman. I would give some- 
thing to see him sitting pale and emaciated, surrounded by 
his matches and his barrels of gunpowder, and expecting the 
moment that was to transport him to Paradise for his heroic 
self-devotion; but if I say any more, there is that fellow 

G will make something of it. And as to Judas Iscariot, 

my reason is different. I would fain see the face of him, 
who, having dipped his hand in the same dish with the Son 
of Man, could afterwards betray him. I have no conception 
of such a thing; nor have I ever seen any picture (not even 
Leonardo's very fine one) that gave me the least idea of it.' — 
'You have said enough, Mr B , to justify your choice.' 

'Oh! ever right, Menenius, — ever right!' 

'There is only one other person I can ever think of after 

this,' continued H ; but without mentioning a name that 

once put on a semblance of mortality. 'If Shakspeare was 
to come into the room, we should all rise up to meet him ; 
but if that person was to come into it, we should all fall down 
and try to kiss the hem of his garment !' 

As a lady present seemed now to get uneasy at the turn 
the conversation had taken, we rose up to go. The morning 
broke with that dim, dubious light by which Giotto, Cimabue, 
and Ghirlandaio must have seen to paint their earliest works ; 
and we parted to meet again and renew similar topics at night, 
the next night, and the night after that, till that night over- 
spread Europe which saw no dawn. The same event, in 
truth, broke up our little Congress that broke up the great 
one. But that was to meet again : our deliberations have 
never been resumed. 



ON READING OLD BOOKS 

I hate to read new books. There are twenty or thirty- 
volumes that I have read over and over again, and these are 
the only ones that I have any desire ever to read at all. It was 
a long time before I could bring myself to sit down to the 
Tales of My Landlord, but now that author's works have made 
a considerable addition to my scanty library. I am told that 
some of Lady Morgan's are good, and have been recommended 
to look into Anastasius; but I have not yet ventured upon 
that task. A lady, the other day, could not refrain from 
expressing her surprise to a friend, who said he had been 
reading Delphine :— she asked,— If it had not been published 
some time back? Women judge of books as they do of 
fashions or complexions, which are admired only 'in their 
newest gloss.' That is not my way. I am not one of those 
who trouble the circulating libraries much, or pester the 
booksellers for mail-coach copies of standard periodical 
pubHcations. I cannot say that I am greatly addicted to 
black-letter, but I profess myself well versed in the marble 
bindings of Andrew Millar, in the middle of the last century; 
nor does my taste revolt at Thurloe's State Papers, in Russia 
leather; or an ample impression of Sir WilHam Temple's 
Essays, with a portrait after Sir Godfrey Kneller in front. 
I do not think altogether the worse of a book for having 
survived the author a generation or two. I have more con- 
fidence in the dead than the living. Contemporary writers 
may generally be divided into two classes — one's friends or 
one's foes. Of the first we are compelled to think. too well, 
and of the last we are disposed to think too ill, to receive 
much genuine pleasure from the perusal, or to judge fairly 
of the merits of either. One candidate for literary fame, 
who happens to be of our acquaintance, writes finely, and 
like a man of genius; but unfortunately has a foolish face, 



On Reading Old Books 6i 

which spoils a deHcate passage : — another inspires us with the 
highest respect for his personal talents and character, but 
does not quite come up to our expectations in print. All 
these contradictions and petty details interrupt the calm 
current of our reflections. If you want to know what any 
of the authors were who lived before our time, and are still 
objects of anxious inquiry, you have only to look into their 
works. But the dust and smoke and noise of modern literature 
have nothing in common with the pure, silent air of immortality. 
When I take up a work that I have read before (the oftener 
the better) I know what I have to expect. The satisfaction 
is not lessened by being anticipated. When the entertainment 
is altogether new, I sit down to it as I should to a strange dish, 
— turn and pick out a bit here and there, and am in doubt 
what to think of the composition. There is a want of con- 
fidence and security to second appetite. New-fangled books 
are also like made-dishes in this respect, that they are generally 
little else than hashes and rifacimentos of what has been 
served up entire and in a more natural state at other times. 
Besides, in thus turning to a well-known author, there is not 
only an assurance that my time will not be thrown away, or 
my palate nauseated with the most insipid or vilest trash, — 
but I shake hands with, and look an old, tried, and valued 
friend in the face, — compare notes, and chat the hours away. 
It is true, we form dear friendships with such ideal guests — 
dearer, alas! and more lasting, than those with our most 
intimate acquaintance. In reading a book which is an old 
favourite with me (say the first novel I ever read) I not only 
have the pleasure of imagination and of a critical relish of 
the work, but the pleasures of memory added to it. It recals 
the same feeUngs and associations which I had in first reading 
it, and which I can never have again in any other way. 
Standard productions of this kind are links in the chain of 
our conscious being. They bind together the different 
scattered divisions of our personal identity. They are 
landmarks and guides in our journey through life. They 
are pegs and loops on which we can hang up, or from which 
we can take down, at pleasure, the wardrobe of a moral 
imagination, the relics of our best affections, the tokens and 
records of our happiest hours. They are 'for thoughts and 



62 On Reading Old Books 

for remembrance!' They are like Fortunatus's Wishing-Cap 
— they give us the best riches — those of Fancy ; and transport 
us, not over half the globe, but (which is better) over half 
our lives, at a word's notice! 

My father Shandy solaced himself with Bruscambille. 
Give me for this purpose a volume of Peregrine Pickle or 
Tom Jones. Open either of them any where — at the Memoirs 
of Lady Vane, or the adventures at the masquerade with 
Lady Bellaston, or the disputes between Thwackum and 
Square, or the escape of Molly Seagrim, or the incident of 
Sophia and her muff, or the edifying prohxity of her aunt's 
lecture — and there I find the same delightful, busy, bustling 
scene as ever, and feel myself the same as when I was first 
introduced into the midst of it. Nay, sometimes the sight 
of an odd volume of these good old English authors on a stall, 
or the name lettered on the back among others on the shelves 
of a library, answers the purpose, revives the whole train of 
ideas, and sets 'the puppets dallying.' Twenty years are 
struck off the list, and I am a child again. A sage philosopher, 
who was not a very wise man, said, that he should like very 
well to be young again, if he could take his experience along 
with him. This ingenious person did not seem to be aware, 
by the gravity of his remark, that the great advantage of 
being young is to be without this weight of experience, which 
he would fain place upon the shoulders of youth, and which 
never comes too late with years. Oh ! what a privilege to 
be able to let this hump, like Christian's burthen, drop' from 
off one's back, and transport one's self, by the help of a little 
musty duodecimo, to the time when 'ignorance was bliss,' 
and when we first got a peep at the raree-show of the world, 
through the glass of fiction — gazing at mankind, as we do at 
wild beasts in a menagerie, through the bars of their cages, — 
or at curiosities in a museum, that we must not touch ! For 
myself, not only are the old ideas of the contents of the work 
brought back to my mind in all their vividness, but the old 
associations of the faces and persons of those I then knew, 
as they were in their life-time — the place where I sat to read 
the volume, the day when I got it, the feeling of the air, the 
fields, the sky — return, and all my early impressions with them. 
This is better to me — those places, those times, those persons, 



On Reading Old Books 63 

and those feelings that come across me as I retrace the story 
and devour the page, are to me better far than the wet sheets 
of the last new novel from the Ballantyne press, to say nothing 
of the Minerva press in Leadenhall-street. It is Hke visiting 
the scenes of early youth. I think of the time 'when I was 
in my father's house, and my path ran down with butter and 
honey,' — when I was a little, thoughtless child, and had no 
other wish or care but to con my daily task, and be happy ! — 
Tom Jones, I remember, was the first work that broke the 
spell. It came down in numbers once a fortnight, in Cooke's 
pocket-edition, embellished with cuts. I had hitherto read 
only in school-books, and a tiresome ecclesiastical history 
(with the exception of Mrs Radcliffe's Romance of the Forest) : 
but this had a different rehsh with it, — 'sweet in the mouth,' 
though not 'bitter in the belly.' It smacked of the world 
I lived in, and in which I was to live — and shewed me groups, 
'gay creatures' not 'of the element,' but of the earth; not 
'living in the clouds,' but travelling the same road that I 
did; — some that had passed on before me, and others that 
might soon overtake me. My heart had palpitated at the 
thoughts of a boarding-school ball, or gala-day at Midsummer 
or Christmas : but the world I had found out in Cooke's 
edition of the British Novelists was to me a dance through 
life, a perpetual gala-day. The sixpenny numbers of this 
work regularly contrived to leave off just in the middle of 
a sentence, and in the nick of a story, where Tom Jones 
discovers Square behind the blanket ; or where Parson Adams, 
in the inextricable confusion of events, very undesignedly gets 
to bed to Mrs Slip-slop. Let me caution the reader against 
this impression of Joseph Andrews; for there is a picture 
of Fanny in it which he should not set his heart on, lest he 
should never meet with any thing like it; or if he should, 
it would, perhaps, be better for him that he had not. It was 

just like ! With what eagerness I used to look 

forward to the next number, and open the prints ! Ah ! 
never again shall I feel the enthusiastic delight with which 
I gazed at the figures, and anticipated the story and adventures 
of Major Bath and Commodore Trunnion, of Trim and myUncle 
Toby, of Don Quixote and Sancho and Dapple, of Gil Bias 
and Dame Lorenza Sephora, of Laura and the fair Lucretia, 



64 On Reading Old Books 

whose lips open and shut like buds of roses. To what nameless 
ideas did they give rise, — with what airy delights I filled up 
the outlines, as I hung in silence over the page ! — Let me still 
recal them, that they may breathe fresh life into me, and 
that I may live that birthday of thought and romantic pleasure 
over again! Talk of the ideal\ This is the only true ideal — 
the heavenly tints of Fancy reflected in the bubbles that 
float upon the spring-tide of human life. 

Oh! Memory! shield me from the world's poor strife. 
And give those scenes tliine everlasting life! 

The paradox with which I set out is, I hope, less startling 
than it was ; the reader will, by this time, have been let into 
my secret. Much about the same time, or I believe rather 
earlier, I took a particular satisfaction in reading Chubb's 
Tracts, and I often think I will get them again to wade through. 
There is a high gusto of polemical divinity in them ; and you 
fancy that you hear a club of shoemakers at Salisbury, debating 
a disputable text from one of St Paul's Epistles in a workman- 
like style, with equal shrewdness and pertinacity. I cannot 
say much for my metaphysical studies, into which I launched 
shortly after with great ardour, so as to make a toil of a 
pleasure. I was presently entangled in the briars and thorns 
of subtle distinctions, — of 'fate, free-will, fore-knowledge 
absolute,' though I cannot add that 'in their wandering mazes 
I found no end'; for I did arrive at some very satisfactory 
and potent conclusions ; nor will I go so far, however ungrateful 
the subject might seem, as to exclaim with Marlowe's Faustus 
— 'Would I had never seen Wittenberg, never read book' — 
that is, never studied such authors as Hartley, Hume, 
Berkeley, &c. Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding 
is, however, a work from which I never derived either pleasure 
or profit ; and Hobbes, dry and powerful as he is, I did not 
read till long afterwards. I read a few poets, which did not 
much hit my taste, — for I would have the reader understand, 
I am deficient in the faculty of imagination; but I fell early 
upon French romances and philosophy, and devoured them 
tooth-and-nail. Many a dainty repast have I made of the 
New Eloise; — the description of the kiss; the excursion on 
the water; the letter of St Preux, recalling the time of their 



On Reading Old Books 65 

first loves; and the account of Julia's death; these I read 
over and over again with unspeakable delight and wonder. 
Some years after, when I met with this work again, I found 
I had lost nearly my whole relish for it (except some few 
parts) and was, I remember, very mucli mortified with the 
change in my taste, which I sought to attribute to the smallness 
and gilt edges of the edition I had bought, and its being 
perfumed with rose-leaves. Nothing could exceed the gravity, 
the solemnity with which I carried home and read the 
Dedication to the Social Contract, with some other pieces of 
the same author, which I had picked up at a stall in a coarse 
leathern cover. Of the Confessions I have spoken elsewhere, 
and may repeat what I have said — 'Sweet is the dew of their 
memory, and pleasant the balm of their recollection!' Their 
beauties are not 'scattered like stray-gifts o'er the earth,' 
but sown thick on the page, rich and rare. I wish I had never 
read the Emilius, or read it with less implicit faith. I had 
no occasion to pamper my natural aversion to affectation or 
pretence, by romantic and artificial means. I had better 
have formed myself on the model of Sir Fopling Flutter. 
There is a class of persons whose virtues and most shining 
qualities sink in, and are concealed by, an absorbent ground 
of modesty and reserve ; and such a one I do, without vanity, 
profess myselfi. Now these are the very persons who are 
likely to attach themselves to the character of Emilius, and 
of whom it is sure to be the bane. This dull, phlegmatic, 
retiring humour is not in a fair way to be corrected, but 
confirmed and rendered desperate, by being in that work 
held up as an object of imitation, as an example of simplicity 
and magnanimity — by coming upon us with all the recommen- 
dations of novelty, surprise, and superiority to the prejudices 
of the world — by being stuck upon a pedestal, made amiable, 
dazzling, a leurre de dupe ! The reliance on solid worth which 
it inculcates, the preference of sober truth to gaudy tinsel, 
hangs like a mill-stone round the neck of the imagination — 

^ Nearly the same sentiment was wittily and happily expressed by a 
friend, who had some lottery puffs, which he had been employed to write, 
returned on his hands for their too great severity of thought and classical 
terseness of style, and who observed on that occasion, that 'Modest merit 
never can succeed ! ' 



66 On Reading Old Books 

'a load to sink a navy' — impedes our progress, and blocks 
up every prospect in life. A man, to get on, to be successful, 
conspicuous, applauded, should not retire upon the centre of 
his conscious resources, but be always at the circumference 
of appearances. He must envelop himself in a halo of mystery 
— he must ride in an equipage of opinion — he must walk with 
a train of self-conceit following him — he must not strip himself 
to a buff-jerkin, to the doublet and hose of his real merits, 
but must surround himself with a cortege of prejudices, like 
the signs of the Zodiac — he must seem any thing but what 
he is, and then he may pass for any thing he pleases. The 
world love to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived 
by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; 
and can forgive every thing but the plain, downright, simple 
honest truth — such as we see it chalked out in the character 
of Emilius. — To return from this digression, which is a little 
out of place here. 

Books have in a great measure lost their power over me; 
nor can I revive the same interest in them as formerly. 
I perceive when a thing is good, rather than feel it. It is true, 

Marcian Colonna is a dainty book; 

and the reading of Mr Keats's Eve of Saint Agnes lately made 
me regret that I was not young again. The beautiful and 
tender images there conjured up, 'come like shadows — so 
depart.' The 'tiger-moth's wings,' which he has spread over 
his rich poetic blazonry, just flit across my fancy ; the gorgeous 
twilight window which he has painted over again in his 
verse, to me 'blushes' almost in vain 'with blood of queens 
and kings.' I know how I should have felt at one time in 
reading such passages; and that is all. The sharp luscious 
flavour, the fine aroma is fled, and nothing but the stalk, the 
bran, the husk of literature is left. If any one were to ask 
me what I read now, I might answer with my Lord Hamlet 
in the play — 'Words, words, words.' — 'What is the matter?' 
— Nothing/^ — They have scarce a meaning. But it was not 
always so. There was a time when to my thinking, every 
word was a flower or a pearl, like those which dropped from 
the mouth of the little peasant-girl in the Fairy tale, or like 
those that fall from the great preacher in the Caledonian 



On Reading Old Books 67 

Chapel! I drank of the stream of knowledge that tempted, 
but did not mock my lips, as of the river of life, freely. How 
eagerly I. slaked my thirst of German sentiment, 'as the hart 
that panteth for the water-springs'; how I bathed and 
revelled, and added my floods of tears to Goethe's Sorrows of 
Werter, and to Schiller's Robbers — 

Giving my stock of more to that which had too much! 

I read, and assented with all my soul to Coleridge's fine 
Sonnet, beginning — 

Schiller! that hour I would have wish'd to die, 
If through the shuddering midnight I had sent, 
From the dark dungeon of the tow'r time-rent, 
That fearful voice, a famish' d father's cry! 

I believe I may date my insight into the mysteries of 
poetry from the commencement of my acquaintance with the 
authors of the Lyrical Ballads; at least, my discrimination 
of the higher sorts — not my predilection for such writers as 
Goldsmith or Pope : nor do I imagine they will say I got my 
liking for the Novelists, or the comic writers, — for the charac- 
ters of Valentine, Tattle, or Miss Prue, from them. If so, 
I must have got from them what they never had themselves. 
In points where poetic diction and conception are concerned, 
I may be at a loss, and liable to be imposed upon : but in 
forming an estimate of passages relating to common life and 
manners, I cannot think I am a plagiarist from any man. 
I there 'know my cue without a prompter.' I may say of 
such studies — Intus et in cute. I am just able to admire 
those literal touches of observation and description, which 
persons of loftier pretensions over-look and despise. I think 
I comprehend something of the characteristic part of Shak- 
speare; and in him indeed, all is characteristic, even the 
nonsense and poetry. I believe it was the celebrated Sir 
Humphrey Davy who used to say, that Shakspeare was rather 
a metaphysician than a poet. At any rate, it was not ill said. 
I wish that I had sooner known the dramatic writers contem- 
porary with Shakspeare; for in looking them over about 
a year ago, I almost revived my old passion for reading, and 
my old delight in books, though they were very nearly new 
to me. The Periodical Essayists I read long ago. The 



68 On Reading Old Books 

Spectator I liked extremely: but the Tatler took my fancy 
most. I read the others soon after, the Rambler, the Adven- 
turer, the World, the Connoisseur: I was not sorry to get to 
the end of them, and have no desire to go regularly through 
them again. I consider myself a thorough adept in Richardson. 
I like the longest of his novels best, and think no part of them 
tedious; nor should I ask to have any thing better to do 
than to read them from beginning to end, to take them up 
when I chose, and lay them down when I was tired, in some 
old family mansion in the country, till every word and syllable 
relating to the bright Clarissa, the divine Clementina, the 
beautiful Pamela, 'with every trick and line of their sweet 
favour,' were once more 'graven in my heart's table^.' I have 
a sneaking kindness for Mackenzie's Julia de Roubigne — for 
the deserted mansion, and straggling gilli-flowers on the 
mouldering garden-wall ; and still more for his Man of Feeling; 
not that it is better, nor so good; but at the time I read it, 
I sometimes thought of the heroine, Miss Walton, and of 

Miss together, and 'that ligament, fine as it was, was 

never broken!' — One of the poets that I have always read 
with most pleasure, and can wander about in for ever with 
a sort of voluptuous indolence, is Spenser; and I like Chaucer 
even better. The only writer among the Italians I can pretend 
to any knowledge of, is Boccacio, and of him I cannot express 
half my admiration. His story of the Hawk I could read and 
think of from day to day, just as I would look at a picture 
of Titian's! — 

I remember, as long ago as the year 1798, going to a 
neighbouring town (Shrewsbury, where Farquhar has laid 
the plot of his Recruiting Officer) and bringing home with me, 
'at one proud swoop,' a copy of Milton's Paradise Lost, and 
another of Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution — both 

^ During the peace of Amiens, a young English officer, of the name of 
Lovelace, was presented at Buonaparte's levee. Instead of the usual 
question, 'Where have you served, Sir.?' the First Consul immediately 
addressed him, 'I perceive your name, Sir, is the same as that of the hero 
of Richardson's Romance!' Here was a Consul. The young man's uncle, 
who was called Lovelace, told me this anecdote while we were stopping 
together at Calais. I had also been thinking that his was the same name as 
that of the hero of Richardson's Romance. This is one of my reasons 
for liking Buonaparte. 



On Reading Old Books 69 

which I have still ; and I still recollect, when I see the covers, 
the pleasure with which I dipped into them as I returned 
with my double prize. I was set up for one while. That 
time is past 'with all its giddy raptures': but I am still 
anxious to preserve its memory, 'embalmed with odours.' — 
With respect to the first of these works, I would be permitted 
to remark here in passing, that it is a sufficient answer to the 
German criticism which has since been started against the 
character of Satan {viz. that it is not one of disgusting 
deformity, or pure, defecated malice) to say that Milton has 
there drawn, not the abstract principle of evil, not a devil 
incarnate, but a fallen angel. This is the scriptural account, 
and the poet has followed it. We may safely retain such 
passages as that well-known one — 

His form had not yet lost 

All her original brightness; nor appear'd 
Less than archangel ruin'd; and the excess 
Of glory obscur'd 

for the theory, which is opposed to them, 'falls flat upon the 
grunsel edge, and shames its worshippers.' Let us hear no 
more then of this monkish cant, and bigotted outcry for the 
restoration of the horns and tail of the devil ! — Again, as to 
the other work, Burke's Reflections, I took a particular pride 
and pleasure in it, and read it to myself and others for months 
afterwards. I had reason for my prejudice in favour of this 
author. To understand an adversary is some praise : to 
admire him is more. I thought I did both : I knew I did one. 
From the first time I ever cast my eyes on any thing of Burke's 
(which was an extract from his Letter to a Noble Lord in 
a three-times a week paper, The St James's Chronicle, in 
1796), I said to myself, 'This is true eloquence: this is a man 
pouring out his mind on paper.' All other style seemed to 
me pedantic and impertinent. Dr Johnson's was walking on 
stilts; and even Junius's (who was at that time a favourite 
with me) with all his terseness, shrunk up into little antithetic 
points and well-trimmed sentences. But Burke's style was 
forked and playful as the lightning, crested like the serpent. 
He delivered plain things on a plain ground; but when he 
rose, there was no end of his flights and circumgyrations — 
and in this very Letter, 'he, like an eagle in a dove-cot, 



^o On Reading Old Books 

fluttered his Volscians' (the Duke of Bedford and the Earl 
of Lauderdale) 1 'in Corioli.' I did not care for his doctrines. 
I was then, and am still, proof against their contagion; but 
I admired the author, and was considered as not a very staunch 
partisan of the opposite side, though I thought myself that 
an abstract proposition was one thing — a masterly transition, 
a brilHant metaphor, another. I conceived too that he might 
be wrong in his main argument, and yet deliver fifty truths in 
arriving at a false conclusion. I remember Coleridge assuring 
me, as a poetical and political set-off to my sceptical admiration, 
that Wordsworth had written an Essay on Marriage, which, 
for manly thought and nervous expression, he deemed in- 
comparably superior. As I had not, at that time, seen any 
specimens of Mr Wordsworth's prose style, I could not express 
my doubts on the subject. If there are greater prose-writers 
than Burke, they either lie out of my course of study, or are 
beyond my sphere of comprehension. I am too old to be 
a convert to a new mythology of genius. The niches are 
occupied, the tables are full. If such is still my admiration 
of this man's misapplied powers, what must it have been at 
a time when I myself was in vain trying, year after year, 
to write a single Essay, nay, a single page or sentence; when 
I regarded the wonders of his pen with the longing eyes of 
one who was dumb and a changeling; and when, to be able 
to convey the slightest conception of my meaning to others 
in words, was the height of an almost hopeless ambition ! 
But I never measured others' excellences by my own defects : 
though a sense of my own incapacity, and of the steep, 
impassable ascent from me to them, made me regard them 
with greater awe and fondness. I have thus run through 
most of my early studies and favourite authors, some of whom 
I have since criticised more at large. Whether those obser- 
vations will survive me, I neither know nor do I much care: 
but to the works themselves, 'worthy of all acceptation,' 
and to the feelings they have always excited in me since I 
could distinguish a meaning in language, nothing shall ever 
prevent me from looking back with gratitude and triumph. 
To have lived in the cultivation of an intimacy with such 

1 He is there called 'Citizen Lauderdale.' Is this the present Earl? 



On Reading Old Books 71 

works, and to have familiarly relished such names, is not to 
have lived quite in vain. 

There are other authors whom I have never read, and yet 
whom I have frequently had a great desire to read, from 
some circumstance relating to them. Among these is Lord 
Clarendon's History of the Grand Rebclhon, after which I have 
a hankering, from hearing it spoken of by good judges — from 
my interest in the events, and knowledge of the characters 
from other sources, and from having seen fine portraits of 
most of them. I like to read a well-penned character, and 
Clarendon is said to have been a master in this way. I should 
like to read Froissart's Chronicles, Hollingshed and Stowe, 
and Fuller's Worthies. I intend, whenever I can, to read 
Beaumont and Fletcher all through. There are fifty-two of 
their plays, and I have only read a dozen or fourteen of them. 
A Wife for a Month, and Thierry and Theodoret, are, I am 
told, delicious, and I can believe it. I should like to read 
the speeches in Thucydides, and Guicciardini's History of 
Florence, and Don Quixote in the original. I have often thought 
of reading the Loves of Persiles and Sigismunda, and the 
Galatea of the same author. But I somehow reserve them 
like 'another Yarrow.' I should also like to read the last 
new novel (if I could be sure it was so) of the author of 
Waverley: — no one would be more glad than I to find it the 
best ! — 



ON ACTORS AND ACTING I 

Players are 'the abstracts and brief chronicles of the 
time'; the motley representatives of human nature. They 
are the only honest hypocrites. Their life is a voluntary 
dream; a studied madness. The height of their ambition 
is to be beside themselves. To-day kings, to-morrow beggars, 
it is only when they are themselves, that they are nothing. 
Made up of mimic laughter and tears, passing from the 
extremes of joy or woe at the prompter's call, they wear the 
livery of other men's fortunes; their very thoughts are not 
their own. They are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant 
of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer than itself. 
We see ourselves at second-hand in them : they shew us all 
that we are, all that we wish to be, and all that we dread to 
be. The stage is an epitome, a bettered likeness of the world, 
with the dull part left out: and, indeed, with this omission, 
it is nearly big enough to hold all the rest. What brings 
the resemblance nearer is, that, as they imitate us, we, in our 
turn, imitate them. How many fine gentlemen do we owe 
to the stage ? How many romantic lovers are mere Romeos 
in masquerade ? How many soft bosoms have heaved with 
Juliet's sighs ? They teach us when to laugh and when to 
weep, when to love and when to hate, upon principle and with 
a good grace! Wherever there is a play-house, the world 
will go on not amiss. The stage not only refines the manners, 
but it is the best teacher of morals, for it is the truest and most 
intelligible picture of life. It stamps the image of virtue on 
the mind by first softening the rude materials of which it is 
composed, by a sense of pleasure. It regulates the passions 
by giving a loose to the imagination. It points out the selfish 
and depraved to our detestation, the amiable and generous 
to our admiration; and if it clothes the more seductive 



On Actors and Acting I 73 

vices with the borrowed graces of wit and fancy, even those 
graces operate as a diversion to the coarser poison of ex- 
perience and bad example, and often prevent or carry off 
the infection by inoculating the mind with a certain taste and 
elegance. To shew how little we agree with the common 
declamations against the immoral tendency of the stage on 
this score, we will hazard a conjecture, that the acting of the 
Beggar's Opera a certain number of nights every year since 
it was first brought out, has done more towards putting down 
the practice of highway robbery, than all the gibbets that 
ever were erected. A person, after seeing this piece, is too 
deeply imbued with a sense of humanity, is in too good humour 
with himself and the rest of the world, to set about cutting 
throats or rifling pockets. Whatever makes a jest of vice, 
leaves it too much a matter of indifference for any one in his 
senses to rush desperately on his ruin for its sake. We 
suspect that just the contrary effect must be produced by the 
representation of George Barnwell, which is too much in the 
style of the Ordinary's sermon to meet with any better success. 
The mind, in such cases, instead of being deterred by the 
alarming consequences held out to it, revolts against the 
denunciation of them as an insult offered to its free-will, and, 
in a spirit of defiance, returns a practical answer to them, by 
daring the worst that can happen. The most striking lesson 
ever read to levity and licentiousness, is in the last act of the 
Inconstant, where young Mirabel is preserved by the fidelity 
of his mistress, Orinda, in the disguise of a page, from the hands 
of assassins, into whose power he has been allured by the 
temptations of vice and beauty. There never was a rake 
who did not become in imagination a reformed man, during 
the representation of the last trying scenes of this admirable 
comedy. 

If the stage is useful as a school of instruction, it is no less 
so as a source of amusement. It is the source of the greatest 
enjoyment at the time, and a never-failing fund of agreeable 
reflection afterwards. The merits of a new play, or of a new 
actor, are always among the first topics of polite conversation. 
One way in which pubHc exhibitions contribute to refine and 
humanise mankind, is by supplying them with ideas and 
subjects of conversation and interest in common. The progress 



74 On Actors and Acting I 

of civilisation is in proportion to the number of commonplaces 
current in society. For instance, if we meet with a stranger 
at an inn or in a stage-coach, who knows nothing but his own 
affairs, his shop, his customers, his farm, his pigs, his poultry, 
we can carry on no conversation with him on these local and 
personal matters : the only way is to let him have all the 
talk to himself. But if he has fortunately ever seen Mr Listen 
act, this is an immediate topic of mutual conversation, and 
we agree together the rest of the evening in discussing the 
merits of that inimitable actor, with the same satisfaction as 
in talking over the affairs of the most intimate friend. 

If the stage thus introduces us famiUarly to our contempo- 
raries, it also brings us acquainted with former times. It is 
an interesting revival of past ages, manners, opinions, dresses, 
persons, and actions, — whether it carries us back to the wars 
of York and Lancaster, or half way back to the heroic times 
of Greece and Rome, in some translation from the French, 
or quite back to the age of Charles II in the scenes of Congreve 
and of Etherege, (the gay Sir George !) — happy age, when 
kings and nobles led purely ornamental lives ; when the utmost 
stretch of a morning's study went no further than the choice 
of a sword-knot, or the adjustment of a side-curl; when the 
soul spoke out in all the pleasing eloquence of dress; and 
beaux and belles, enamoured of themselves in one another's 
follies, fluttered like gilded butterflies in giddy mazes through 
the walks of St James's Park! 

A good company of comedians, a Theatre-Royal judiciously 
managed, is your true Herald's College ; the only Antiquarian 
Society, that is worth a rush. It is for this reason that there 
is such an air of romance about players, and that it is pleasanter 
to see them, even in their own persons, than any of the three 
learned professions. We feel more respect for John Kemble 
in a plain coat, than for the Lord Chancellor on the woolsack. 
He is surrounded, to our eyes, with a greater number of im- 
posing recollections : he is a more reverend piece of formality ; 
a more compHcated tissue of costume. We do not know 
whether to look upon this accomphshed actor as Pierre or 
King John or Coriolanus or Cato or Leontes or the Stranger. 
But we see in him a stately hieroglyphic of humanity ; a living 
monument of departed greatness, a sombre comment on the 



On Actors and Acting I 75 

rise and fall of kings. We look after him till he is out of sight, 
as we listen to a story of one of Ossian's heroes, to 'a tale of 
other times ! ' 

One of the most affecting things we know is to see a 
favourite actor take leave of the stage. We were present not 
long ago when Mr Bannister quitted it. We do not wonder 
that his feelings were overpowered on the occasion : ours were 
nearly so too. We remembered him, in the first heydey of our 
youthful spirits, in the Prize, in which he played so dehghtfully 
with that fine old croaker Suett, and Madame Storace, — in 
the farce of My Grandmother, in the Son-in-Law, in Autolycus, 
and in Scrub, in which our satisfaction was at its height. At 
that time, King and Parsons, and Dodd, and Quick, and 
Edwin were in the full vigour of their reputation, who are now 
all gone. We still feel the vivid delight with which we used 
to see their names in the play-bills, as we went along to the 
Theatre. Bannister was one of the last of these that remained ; 
and we parted with him as we should with one of our oldest 
and best friends. The most pleasant feature in the profession 
of a player, and which, indeed, is peculiar to it, is that we not 
only admire the talents of those who adorn it, but we contract 
a personal intimacy with them. There is no class of society 
whom so many persons regard with affection as actors. We 
greet them on the stage; we like to meet them in the streets; 
they almost always recall to us pleasant associations ; and we 
feel our gratitude excited, without the uneasiness of a sense 
of obligation. The very gaiety and popularity, however, 
which surround the life of a favourite performer, make the 
retiring from it a very serious business. It glances a mortifying 
reflection on the shortness of human life, and the vanity of 
human pleasures. Something reminds us, that 'all the world 's 
a stage, and all the men and women merely players.' 



ON ACTORS AND ACTING II 

It has been considered as the misfortune of first-rate talents 
for the stage, that they leave no record behind them except 
that of vague rumour, and that the genius of a great actor 
perishes with him, 'leaving the world no copy.' This is a 
misfortune, or at least an unpleasant circumstance, to actors; 
but it is, perhaps, an advantage to the stage. It leaves an 
opening to originality. The stage is always beginning anew; 
the candidates for theatrical reputation are always setting' 
out afresh, unencumbered by the affectation of the faults or 
excellences of their predecessors. In this respect, we should 
imagine that the average quantity of dramatic talent remains 
more nearly the same than that in any other walk of art. 
In no other instance do the complaints of the degeneracy of 
the moderns seem so unfounded as in this ; and Colley Gibber's 
account of the regular decline of the stage, from the time of 
Shakspeare to that of Charles II, and from the time of 
Charles II to the beginning of George II, appears quite 
ridiculous. The stage is a place where genius is sure to come 
upon its legs, in a generation or two at farthest. In the other 
arts, (as painting and poetry), it has been contended that 
what has been well done already, by giving rise to endless 
vapid imitations, is an obstacle to what might be done well 
hereafter : that the models or chef-d'oeuvres of art, where they 
are accumulated, choke up the path to excellence; and that 
the works of genius, where they can be rendered permanent 
and handed down from age to age, not only prevent, but 
render superfluous, future productions of the same kind. 
We have not, neither do we want, two Shakspeares, two 
Miltons, two Raphaels, any more than we require two suns 
in the same sphere. Even Miss O'Neill stands a Httle in the 
way of our recollections of Mrs Siddons. But Mr Kean is 
an excellent substitute for the memory of Garrick, whom we 
never saw. When an author dies, it is no matter, for his 



On Actors and Acting II 77 

works remain. When a great actor dies, there is a void ' 
produced in society, a gap which requires to be filled up. 
Who does not go to see Kean ? Who, if Garrick were alive, 
would go to see him ? At least one or the other must have 
quitted the stage. We have seen what a ferment has been 
excited among our living artists by the exhibition of the 
works of the old Masters at the British Gallery. What would 
the actors say to it, if, by any spell or power of necromancy, 
all the celebrated actors, for the last hundred years, could be 
made to appear again on the boards of Covent Garden and 
Drury-Lane, for the last time, in all their most brilliant 
parts ? What a rich treat to the town, what a feast for the 
critics, to go and see Betterton, and Booth, and Wilks, and 
Sandford, and Nokes, and Leigh, and Penkethman, and 
Bullock, and Estcourt, and Dogget, and Mrs Barry, and 
Mrs Montfort, and Mrs Oldfield, and Mrs Bracegirdle, and 
Mrs Gibber, and Gibber himself, the prince of coxcombs, and 
Macklin, and Quin, and Rich, and Mrs Clive, and Mrs Pritchard, 
and Mrs Abington, and Weston, and Shuter, and Garrick, and 
all the rest of those who 'gladdened Hfe, and whose deaths 
echpsed the gaiety of nations' ! We should certainly be there. 
We should buy a ticket for the season. We should enjoy 
our hundred days again. We should not lose a single night. 
We would not, for a great deal, be absent from Betterton's 
Hamlet or his Brutus, or from Booth's Cato, as it was first 
acted to the contending applause of Whigs and Tories. We 
should be in the first row when Mrs Barry (who was kept 
by Lord Rochester, and with whom Otway was in love) 
played Monimia or Belvidera; and we suppose we should 
go to see Mrs Bracegirdle (with whom all the world was in 
love) in all her parts. We should then know exactly whether 
Penkethman's manner of picking a chicken, and Bullock's 
mode of devouring asparagus, answered to the ingenious 
account of them in the Tatler; and whether Dogget was 
equal to Dowton — whether Mrs Montfort^ or Mrs Abington 

^ The following lively description of this actress is given by Cibber in 
his Apology : — 

'What found most employment for her whole various excellence at once, 
was the part of Melantha, in Marriage-a-la-mode. Melantha is as finished 
an impertinent as ever fluttered in a drawing-room, and seems to contain 
the most complete system of female foppery that could possibly be crowded 



78 On Actors and Acting II 

was the finest lady — whether Wilks or Gibber was the best 
Sir Harry Wildair — whether Mackhn was really 'the Jew 
that Shakspeare drew,' and whether Garrick was, upon the 
whole, so great an actor as the world have made him out ! 
Many people have a strong desire to pry into the secrets of 
futurity: for our own parts, we should be satisfied if we had 
the power to recall the dead, and live the past over again 
as often as we pleased! Players, after all, have little reason 
to complain of their hard-earned, short-lived popularity. 
One thunder of applause from pit, boxes, and gallery, is equal 
to a whole immortality of posthumous fame : and when we 
hear an actor, whose modesty is equal to his merit, declare, 
that he would like to see a dog wag his tail in approbation, 
what must he feel when he sees the whole house in a roar! 
Besides, Fame, as if their reputation had been entrusted to 
her alone, has been particularly careful of the renown of her 
theatrical favourites: she forgets one by one, and year by 

into the tortured form of a fine lady. Her language, dress, motion, manners, 
soul, and body, are in a continual hurry to be something more than is 
necessary or commendable. And though I doubt it will be a vain labour 
to offer you a just likeness of Mrs Montfort's action, yet the fantastic 
impression is still so strong in my memory, that I cannot help saying 
something, though fantastically, about it. The first ridiculous airs that 
break from her are upon a gallant never seen before, who delivers her a letter 
from her father, recommending him to her good graces as an honourable 
lover. Here now, one would think she might naturally shew a little of the 
sex's decent reserve, though never so slightly covered! No, sir; not 
a tittle of it; modesty is the virtue of a poor-soul'd country gentlewoman: 
she is too much a court-lady, to be under so vulgar a confusion : she reads 
the letter, therefore, with a careless, dropping lip, and an erected brow, 
humming it hastily over, as if she were impatient to outgo her father's 
commands, by making a complete conquest of him at once: and that the 
letter might not embarrass her attack, crack! she crumbles it at once into 
her palm, and pours upon him her whole artillery of airs, eyes, and motion; 
down goes her dainty, diving body to the ground, as if she were sinking 
under the conscious load of her own attractions; then launches into a flood 
of fine language and compliment, still playing her chest forward in fifty 
falls and risings, like a swan upon waving water; and, to complete her 
impertinence, she is so rapidly fond of her own wit, that she will not give 
her lover leave to praise it: Silent assenting bows, and vain endeavours to 
speak, are all the share of the conversation he is admitted to, which at last 
he is relieved from, by her engagement to half a score visits, which she 
swhns from him to make, with a promise to return In a twinkling.' — The 
Life of Coll ey Cibber^ p. 138. 



On Actors and Acting II 79 

year, those who have been great lawyers, great statesmen, 
and great warriors in their day; but the name of Garrick 
still survives with the works of Reynolds and of Johnson. 

Actors have been accused, as a profession, of being extra- 
vagant and dissipated. While they are said to be so as a 
piece of common cant, they are likely to continue so. But 
there is a sentence in Shakspeare which should be stuck as a 
label in the mouths of our beadles and whippers-in of morality : 
'The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together : 
our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not : 
and our vices would despair if they were not cherished by our 
virtues.' With respect to the extravagance of actors, as a 
traditional character, it is not to be wondered at. They live 
from hand to mouth: they plunge from want into luxury; 
they have no means of maldng money breed, and all professions 
that do not live by turning money into money, or have not 
a certainty of accumulating it in the end by parsimony, 
spend it. Uncertain of the future, they make sure of the 
present moment. This is not unwise. Chilled with poverty, 
steeped in contempt, they sometimes pass into the sunshine 
of fortune, and are lifted to the very pinnacle of public favour ; 
yet even there cannot calculate on the continuance of success, 
but are, 'like the giddy sailor on the mast, ready with every 
blast to topple down into the fatal bowels of the deep ! ' 
Besides, if the young enthusiast, who is smitten with the stage, 
and with the public as a mistress, were naturally a close hunks, 
he would become or remain a city clerk, instead of turning 
player. Again, with respect to the habit of convivial indul- 
gence, an actor, to be a good one, must have a great spirit 
of enjoyment in himself, strong impulses, strong passions, and 
a strong sense of pleasure: for it is his business to imitate 
the passions, and to communicate pleasure to others. A man 
of genius is not a machine. The neglected actor may be 
excused if he drinks oblivion of his disappointments; the 
successful one, if he quaffs the applause of the world, and enjoys 
the friendship of those who are the friends of the favourites 
of fortune, in draughts of nectar. There is no path so steep 
as that of fame : no labour so hard as the pursuit of excellence. 
The intellectual excitement, inseparable from those professions 
which call forth all our sensibility to pleasure and pain, 



8o On Actors and Acting II 

requires some corresponding physical excitement to support 
our failure, and not a little to allay the ferment of the spirits 
attendant on success. If there is any tendency to dissipation 
beyond this in the profession of a player, it is owing to the 
prejudices entertained against them, to that spirit of bigotry 
which in a neighbouring country would deny actors Christian 
burial after their death, and to that cant of criticism, which, 
in our own, slurs over their characters, while living, with 
a half-witted jest. 

A London engagement is generally considered by actors 
as the ne ■plus ultra of their ambition, as ' a consummation 
devoutly to be wished,' as the great prize in the lottery of 
their professional life. But this appears to us, who are not 
in the secret, to be rather the prose termination of their 
adventurous career: it is the provincial commencement that 
is the poetical and truly enviable part of it. After that, they 
have comparatively little to hope or fear. 'The wine of 
life is drunk, and but the lees remain.' In London, they 
become gentlemen, and the King's servants : but it is the 
romantic mixture of the hero and the vagabond that constitutes 
the essence of the player's life. It is the transition from 
their real to their assumed characters, from the contempt 
of the world to the applause of the multitude, that gives 
its zest to the latter, and raises them as much above common 
humanity at night, as in the daytime they are depressed 
below it. 'Hiirried from fierce extremes, by contrast made 
more fierce,' — it is rags and a flock-bed which give their 
splendour to a plume of feathers and a throne. We should 
suppose, that if the most admired actor on the London stage 
were brought to confession on this point, he would acknowledge 
that all the applause he had received from 'brilHant and 
overflowing audiences,' was nothing to the light-headed 
intoxication of unlooked-for success in a barn. In town, 
actors are criticised: in country-places, they are wondered 
at, or hooted at: it is of little consequence which, so that 
the interval is not too long between. For ourselves, we own 
that the description of the strolling player in Gil Bias, soaking 
his dry crusts in the well by the roadside, presents to us a 
perfect picture of human felicity. 



ON A LANDSCAPE OF NICOLAS POUSSIN 

And blind Orion hungry for the morn. 

Orion, the subject of this landscape, was the classical 
Nimrod; and is called by Homer, 'a hunter of shadows, 
himself a shade.' He was the son of Neptune; and having 
lost an eye in some affray between the Gods and men, was 
told that if he would go to meet the rising sun, he would 
recover his sight. He is represented setting out on his journey, 
with men on his shoulders to guide him, a bow in his hand, 
and Diana in the clouds greeting him. He stalks along, a 
giant upon earth, and reels and falters in his gait, as if just 
awaked out of sleep, or uncertain of his way; — you see his 
blindness, though his back is turned. Mists rise around him, 
and veil the sides of the green forests; earth is dank and 
fresh with dews, the 'grey dawn and the Pleiades before him 
dance,', and in the distance are seen the blue hills and sullen 
ocean. Nothing was ever more finely conceived or done. 
It breathes the spirit of the morning; its moistrre, its repose, 
its obscurity, waiting the miracle of light to kindle it into 
smiles: the whole is, like the principal figure in it, 'a fore- 
runner of the dawn.' The same atmosphere tinges and imbues 
every object, the same dull light 'shadowy sets off' the face 
of nature: one feeling of vastness, of strangeness, and of 
primeval forms pervades the painter's canvas, and we are 
thrown back upon the first integrity of things. This great 
and learned man might be said to see nature through the 
glass of time : he alone has a right to be considered as th^ 
painter of classical antiquity. Sir Joshua has done him justice 
in this respect. He could give to the scenery of his heroic 
fables that unimpaired look of original nature, full, solid, 
large, luxuriant, teeming with Hfe and power ; or deck it with 
all the pomp of art, with temples and towers, and mythologic 

s. H. 6 



82 On a Landscape of Nicolas Poussin 

groves. His pictures 'denote a foregone conclusion.' He 
applies nature to his purposes, works out her images according 
to the standard of his thoughts, embodies high fictions; and 
the first conception being given, all the rest seems to grow 
out of, and be assimilated to it, by the unfailing process of 
a studious imagination. Like his own Orion, he overlooks 
the surrounding scene, appears to 'take up the isles as a very 
little thing, and to lay the earth in a balance.' With a 
laborious and mighty grasp, he put nature into the mould of 
the ideal and antique; and was among painters (more than 
any one else) what Milton was among poets. There is in both 
something of the same pedantry, the same stiffness, the 
same elevation, the same grandeur, the same mixture of art 
and nature, the same richness of borrowed materials, the 
same unity of character. Neither the poet nor the painter 
lowered the subjects they treated, but filled up the outHne 
in the fancy, and added strength and reality to it; and thus 
not only satisfied, but surpassed the expectations of the 
spectator and the reader. This is held for the triumph and 
the perfection of works of art. To give us nature, such as 
we see it, is well and deserving of praise; to give us nature, 
such as we have never seen, but have often wished to see it, 
is better, and deserving of higher praise. He who can show 
the world in its first naked glory, with the hues of fancy 
spread over it, or in its high and palmy state, with the gravity 
of history stamped on the proud monuments of vanished 
empire, — who, by his 'so potent art,' can recal time past, 
transport us to distant places, and join the regions of imagina- 
tion (a new conquest) to those of reality, — who shows us not 
only what nature is, but what she has been, and is capable 
of, — he who does this, and does it with simpHcity, with truth, 
and grandeur, is lord of nature and her powers; and his mind 
is universal, and his art the master-art ! 

There is nothing in this 'more than natural,' if criticism 
could be persuaded to think so. The historic painter does 
not neglect or contravene nature, but follows her more closely 
up into her fantastic heights, or hidden recesses. He demon- 
strates what she would be in conceivable circumstances, and 
under implied conditions. He 'gives to airy nothing a local 
habitation,' not 'a name.' At his touch, words start up into 



On a Landscape of Nicolas Poussin 83 

images, thoughts become things. He clothes a dream, a 
phantom with form and colour and the wholesome attributes 
of reality. His art is a second nature; not a different one. 
There are those, indeed, who think that not to copy nature, 
is the rule for attaining perfection. Because they cannot 
paint the objects which they have seen, they fancy themselves 
qualified to paint the ideas which they have not seen. But 
it is possible to fail in this latter and more difficult style 
of imitation, as well as in the former humbler one. The 
detection, it is true, is not so easy, because the objects are not 
so nigh at hand to compare, and therefore there is more room 
both for false pretension and for self-deceit. They take an 
epic motto or subject, and conclude that the spirit is implied 
as a thing of course. They paint inferior portraits, maudlin 
lifeless faces, without ordinary expression, or one look, feature, 
or particle of nature in them, and think that this is to rise to 
the truth of history. They vulgarise and degrade whatever 
is interesting or sacred to the mind, and suppose that they 
thus add to the dignity of their profession. They represent 
a face that seems as if no thought or feeling of any kind had 
ever passed through it, and would have you believe that this 
is the very subHme of expression, such as it would appear 
in heroes, or demi-gods of old, when rapture or agony was 
raised to its height. They show you a landscape that looks 
as if the sun never shone upon it, and tell you that it is not 
modern — that so earth looked when Titan first kissed it with 
his rays. This is not the true ideal. It is not to fill the moulds 
of the imagination, but to deface and injure them : it is not 
to come up to, but to fall short of the poorest conception in 
the public mind. Such pictures should not be hung in the 
same room with that of Orion^. 

1 Every thing tends to show the manner in which a great artist is formed. 
If any person could claim an exemption from the careful imitation of indivi- 
dual objects, it was Nicolas Poussin. He studied the antique, but he also 
studied nature. 'I have often admired,' says Vignuel de Marville, who 
knew him at a late period of his life, 'the love he had for his art. Old as 
he was, I frequently saw him among the ruins of ancient Rome, out in the 
Campagna, or along the banks of the Tyber, sketching a scene that had 
pleased him; and I often met him with his handkerchief full of stones, 
moss, or flowers, which he carried home, that he might copy them exactly 
from nature. One day I asked him how he had attained to such a degree 

6—2 



84 On a Landscape of Nicolas Poussin 

Poussin was, of all painters, the most poetical. He was 
the painter of ideas. No one ever told a story half so well, 
nor so well knew what was capable of being told by the pencil. 
He seized on, and struck off with grace and precision, just 
that point of view which would be likely to catch the reader's 
fancy. There is a significance, a consciousness in whatever 
he does (sometimes a vice, but oftener a virtue) beyond any 
other painter. His Giants sitting on the tops of craggy 
mountains, as huge themselves, and playing idly on their Pan's- 
pipes, seem to have been seated there these three thousand 
years, and to know the beginning and the end of their own 
story. An infant Bacchus or Jupiter is big with his future 
destiny. Even inanimate and dumb things speak a language 
of their own. His snakes, the messengers of fate, are inspired 
with human intellect. His trees grow and expand their 
leaves in the air, glad of the rain, proud of the sun, awake 
to the winds of heaven. In his Plague of Athens, the very 
buildings seem stiff with horror. His picture of the Deluge 
is, perhaps, the finest historical landscape in the world. You 
see a waste of waters, wide, interminable : the sun is labouring, 
wan and weary, up the sky; the clouds, dull and leaden, lie 
like a load upon the eye, and heaven and earth seem comming- 
ling into one confused mass ! His human figures are sometimes 
'o'er-informed' with this kind of feeling. Their actions have 
too much gesticulation, and the set expression of the features 
borders too much on the mechanical and caricatured style. 
In this respect, they form a contrast to Raphael's, whose 
figures never appear to be sitting for their pictures, or to be 
conscious of a spectator, or to have come from the painter's 

of perfection, as to have gained so high a rank among the great painters 
of Italy .-* He answered, I have neglected nothing.' — See his Life lately 
published. It appears from this account that he had not fallen into a recent 
error, that Nature puts the man of genius out. As a contrast to the foregoing 
description, I might mention, that I remember an old gentleman once 
asking Mr West in the British Gallery, if he had ever been at Athens .'' To 
which the President made answer, No ; nor did he feel any great desire to go ; 
for that he thought he had as good an idea of the place from the Catalogue, 
as he could get by hving there for any number of years. What would he 
have said, if any one had told him, he could get as good an idea of the 
subject of one of his great works from reading the Catalogue of it, as from 
seeing the picture itself ! Yet the answer was characteristic of the genius 
of the painter. 



On a Landscape of Nicolas Poussin 85 

hand. In Nicolas Poussin, on the contrary, every thing 
seems to have a distinct understanding with the artist: 'the 
very stones prate of their whereabout': each object has its 
part and place assigned, and is in a sort of compact with the 
rest of the picture. It is this conscious keeping, and, as it 
were, internal design, that gives their peculiar character to 
the works of this artist. There was a picture of Aurora in 
the British Gallery a year or two ago. It was a suffusion of 
golden Hght. The Goddess wore her saffron-coloured robes, 
and appeared just risen from the gloomy bed of old Tithonus. 
Her very steeds, milk-white, were tinged with the yellow dawn. 
It was a personification of the morning. — Poussin succeeded 
better in classic than in sacred subjects. The latter are 
comparatively heavy, forced, full of violent contrasts of 
colour, of red, blue, and black, and without the true prophetic 
inspiration of the characters. But in his Pagan allegories 
and fables he was quite at home. The native gravity and 
native levity of the Frenchman were combined with Italian 
scenery and an antique gusto, and gave even to his colouring 
an air of learned indifference. He wants, in one respect, 
grace, form, expression ; but he has every where sense and 
meaning, perfect costume and propriety. His personages 
always belong to the class and time represented, and are 
strictly versed in the business in hand. His grotesque com- 
positions in particular, his Nymphs and Fauns, are superior 
(at least, as far as style is concerned) even to those of Rubens. 
They are taken more immediately out of fabulous history. 
Rubens's Satyrs and Bacchantes have a more jovial and 
voluptuous aspect, are more drunk with pleasure, more full 
of animal spirits and riotous impulses; they laugh and bound 
along — 

Leaping like wanton kids in pleasant spring : 

but those of Poussin have more of the intellectual part of the 
character, and seem vicious on reflection, and of set purpose. 
Rubens's are noble specimens of a class; Poussin's are 
allegorical abstractions of the same class, with bodies less 
pampered, but with minds more secretly depraved. The 
Bacchanalian groups of the Flemish painter were, however, 
his masterpieces in composition. Witness those prodigies 



86 On a Landscape of Nicolas Poussin 

of colour, character, and expression, at Blenheim. In the 
more chaste and refined delineation of classic fable, Poussin 
was without a rival, Rubens, who was a match for him in 
the wild and picturesque, could not pretend to vie with the 
elegance and purity of thought in his picture of Apollo giving 
a poet a cup of water to drink, nor with the gracefulness of 
design in the figure of a nymph squeezing the juice of a bunch 
of grapes from her fingers (a rosy wine-press) which falls into 
the mouth of a chubby infant below. But, above all, who 
shall celebrate, in terms of fit praise, his picture of the shepherds 
in the Vale of Tempe going out in a fine morning of the spring, 
and coming to a tomb with this inscription: — Et ego in 
Arcadia vixi ! The eager curiosity of some, the expression 
of others who start back with fear and surprise, the clear 
breeze playing with the branches of the shadowing trees, 
'the valleys low, where the mild zephyrs use,' the distant, 
uninterrupted, sunny prospect speak (and for ever will speak 
on) of ages past to ages yet to come^ ! 

Pictures are a set of chosen images, a stream of pleasant 
thoughts passing through the mind. It is a luxury to have 
the walls of our rooms hung round with them, and no less so 
to have such a gallery in the mind, to con over the relics of 
ancient art bound up 'within the book and volume of the 
brain, unmixed (if it were possible) with baser matter!' 
A Hfe passed among pictures, in the study and the love of 
art, is a happy noiseless dream : or rather, it is to dream and 
to be awake at the same time ; for it has all ' the sober certainty 
of waking bliss,' with the romantic voluptuousness of a 
visionary and abstracted being. They are the bright consum- 
mate essences of things, and 'he who knows of these delights 
to taste and interpose them oft, is not unwise!' — The Orion, 
which I have here taken occasion to descant upon, is one of 
a collection of excellent pictures, as this collection is itself 
one of a series from the old masters, which have for some 
years back embrowned the walls of the British Gallery, and 

^ Poussin has repeated this subject more than once, and appears to 
have revelled in its witcheries. I have before alluded to it, and may again. 
It is hard that we should not be allowed to dwell as often as we please on 
what delights us, when things that are disagreeable recur so often against 
our will. 



On a Landscape of Nicolas Poussin 87 

enriched the public eye. What hues (those of nature mellowed 
by time) breathe around, as we enter ! What forms are there, 
woven into the memory ! What looks, which only the answer- 
ing looks of the spectator can express ! What intellectual 
stores have been yearly poured forth from the shrine of 
ancient art ! The works are various, but the names the same 
— heaps of Rembrandts frowning from the darkened walls, 
Rubens's glad gorgeous groups, Titians more rich and rare, 
Claudes always exquisite, sometimes beyond compare, Guido's 
endless cloying sweetness, the learning of Poussin and the 
Caracci, and Raphael's princely magnificence, crowning all. 
We read certain letters and syllables in the catalogue, and at 
the well-known magic sound, a miracle of skill and beauty 
starts to view. One might think that one year's prodigal 
display of such perfection would exhaust the labours of one 
man's life; but the next year, and the next to that, we find 
another harvest reaped and gathered in to the great garner 
of art, by the same immortal hands — 

Old Genius the porter of them was; 

He letteth in, he letteth out to wend. — 
Their works seem endless as their reputation — to be many as 
they are complete — to multiply with the desire of the mind 
to see more and more of them; as if there were a living power 
in the breath of Fame, and in the very names of the great 
heirs of glory 'there were propagation too!' It is something 
to have a collection of this sort to count upon once a year; 
to have one last, lingering look yet to come. Pictures are 
scattered like stray gifts through the world; and while they 
remain, earth has yet a little gilding left, not quite rubbed 
off, dishonoured, and defaced. There are plenty of standard 
works still to be found in this country, in the collections at 
Blenheim, at Burleigh, and in those belonging to Mr Angerstein, 
Lord Grosvenor, the Marquis of Stafford, and others, to keep 
up this treat to the lovers of art for many years : and it is 
the more desirable to reserve a privileged sanctuary of this 
sort, where the eye may dote, and the heart take its fill of 
such pictures as Poussin's Orion, since the Louvre is stripped 
of its triumphant spoils, and since he, who collected it, and 
wore it as a rich jewel in his Iron Crown, the hunter of greatness 
and of glory, is himself a shade! — 



ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING I 

'There is a pleasure in painting which none but painters 
know.' In writing, you have to contend with the world; 
in painting, you have only to carry on a friendly strife with 
Nature. You sit down to your task, and are happy. From 
the moment that you take up the pencil, and look Nature in 
the face, you are at peace with your own heart. No angry 
passions rise to disturb the silent progress of the work, to 
shake the hand, or dim the brow: no irritable humours are 
set afloat : you have no absurd opinions to combat, no point 
to strain, no adversary to crush, no fool to annoy — you are 
actuated by fear or favour to no man. There is 'no juggling 
here,' no sophistry, no intrigue, no tampering with the evidence, 
no attempt to make black white, or white black: but you 
resign yourself into the hands of a greater power, that of 
Nature, with the simpHcity of a child, and the devotion of 
an enthusiast — 'study with joy her manner, and with rapture 
taste her style,' The mind is calm, and full at the same 
time. The hand and eye are equally employed. In tracing 
the commonest object, a plant or the stump of a tree, you 
learn something every moment. You perceive unexpected 
differences, and discover likenesses where you looked for no 
such thing. You try to set down what you see — find out 
your error, and correct it. You need not play tricks, or 
purposely mistake : with all your pains, you are still far short 
of the mark. Patience grows out of the endless pursuit, and 
turns it into a luxury, A streak in a flower, a wrinkle in 
a leaf, a tinge in a cloud, a stain in an old wall or ruin grey, 
are seized with avidity as the s folia opima of this sort of mental 
warfare, and furnish out labour for another half day. The 
hours pass away untold, without chagrin, and without 
weariness; nor would you ever wish to pass them otherwise. 



On the Pleasure of Painting I 89 

Innocence is joined with industry, pleasure with business; 
and the mind is satisfied, though it is not engaged in thinking 
or in doing any mischief^. 

I have not much pleasure in writing these Essays, or in 
reading them afterwards ; though I own I now and then meet 
with a phrase that I like, or a thought that strikes me as 
a true one. But after I begin them, I am only anxious to 
get to the end of them, which I am not sure I shall do, for 
I seldom see my way a page or even a sentence beforehand; 
and when I have as by a miracle escaped, I trouble myself 
little more about them. I sometimes have to write them 
twice over: then it is necessary to read the proof, to prevent 
mistakes by the printer; so that by the time they appear 
in a tangible shape, and one can con them over with a conscious, 
sidelong glance to the pubHc approbation, they have lost their 
gloss and relish, and become 'more tedious than a twice-told 
tale.' For a person to read his own works over with any 
great delight, he ought first to forget that he ever wrote them. 
Famiharity naturally breeds contempt. It is, in fact, like 

^ There is a passage in Werter which contains a very pleasing illustration 
of this doctrine, and is as follows. 

'About a league from the town is a place called Walheim. It is very 
agreeably situated on the side of a hill: from one of the paths which leads 
out of the village, you have a view of the whole country; and there is a 
good old woman who sells wine, coffee, and tea there : but better than all 
this are two Hme-trees before the church, which spread their branches over 
a Httle green, surrounded by barns and cottages. I have seen few places 
more retired and peaceful. I send for a chair and table from the old 
woman's, and there I drink my coffee and read Homer. It was by accident 
that I discovered this place one fine afternoon: all was perfect stillness; 
every body was in the fields, except a httle boy about four years old, who 
was sitting on the ground, and holding between his knees a child of about 
six months ; he pressed it to his bosom with his little arms, which made 
a sort of great chair for it, and notwithstanding the vivacity which sparkled 
in his eyes, he sat perfectly still. Quite delighted with the scene, I sat 
down on a plough opposite, and had great pleasure in drawing this little 
picture of brotherly tenderness. I added a bit of the hedge, the barn-door, 
and some broken cart-wheels, without any order, just as they happened 
to lie ; and in about an hour I found I had made a drawing of great expression 
and very correct design, without having put in any thing of my own. This 
confirmed me in the resolution I had made before, only to copy nature for 
the future. Nature is inexhaustible, and alone forms the greatest masters. 
Say what you will of rules, they alter the true features, and the natural 
expression.' Page 15. 



9° On the Pleasure of Painting I 

poring fondly over a piece of blank paper: from repetition, 
the words convey no distinct meaning to the mind, are mere 
idle sounds, except that our vanity claims an interest and 
property in them. I have more satisfaction in my own thoughts 
than in dictating them to others: words are necessary to 
explain the impression of certain things upon me to the reader, 
but they rather weaken and draw a veil over than strengthen 
it to myself. However I might say with the poet, 'My mind 
to me a kingdom is,' yet I have little ambition 'to set a throne 
or chair of state in the understandings of other men.' The 
ideas we cherish most, exist best in a kind of shadowy ab- 
straction, 

Pure in the last recesses of the mind; 

and derive neither force nor interest from being exposed to 
public view. They are old familiar acquaintance, and any 
change in them, arising from the adventitious ornaments of 
style or dress, is little to their advantage. After I have once 
written on a subject, it goes out of my mind: my feeHngs 
about it have been melted down into words, and them I forget. 
I have, as it were, discharged my memory of its old habitual 
reckoning, and rubbed out the score of real sentiment. For 
the future, it exists only for the sake of others. — But I cannot 
say, from my own experience, that the same process takes 
place in transferring our ideas to canvas; they gain more 
than they lose in the mechanical transformation. One is 
never tired of painting, because you have to set down not 
what you knew already, but what you have just discovered. 
In the former case, you translate feelings into words; in the 
latter, names into things. There is a continual creation out 
of nothing going on. With every stroke of the brush, a new 
field of inquiry is laid open; new difficulties arise, and new 
triumphs are prepared over them. By comparing the imitation 
with the original, you see what you have done, and how much 
you have still to do. The test of the senses is severer than that 
of fancy, and an over-match even for the delusions of our 
self-love. One part of a picture shames another, and you 
determine to paint up to yourself, if you cannot come up to 
nature. Every object becomes lustrous from the light thrown 
back upon it by the mirror of art : and by the aid of the pencil 



On the Pleasure of Painting I 91 

we may be said to touch and handle the objects of sight. 
The air-drawn visions that hover on the verge of existence 
have a bodily presence given them on the canvas : the form 
of beauty is changed into a substance: the dream and the 
glory of the universe is made 'palpable to feeling as to sight.' 
— And see! a rainbow starts from the canvas, with all its 
humid train of glory, as if it were drawn from its cloudy arch 
in heaven. The spangled landscape glitters with drops of 
dew after the shower. The 'fleecy fools' show their coats 
in the gleams of the setting sun. The shepherds pipe their 
farewell notes in the fresh evening air. And is this bright 
vision made from a dead dull blank, like a bubble reflecting 
the mighty fabric of the universe ? Who would think this 
miracle of Rubens' pencil possible to be performed ? Who, 
having seen it, would not spend his life to do the like ? See 
how the rich fallows, the bare stubble-field, the scanty harvest- 
home, drag in Rembrandt's landscapes! How often have 
I looked at them and nature, and tried to do the same, till 
the very 'light thickened,' and there was an earthiness in 
the feeling of the air! There is no end of the refinements of 
art and nature in this respect. One may look at the misty 
glimmering horizon till the eye dazzles and the imagination 
is lost, in hopes to transfer the whole interminable expanse 
at one blow upon canvas. Wilson said, he used to try to paint 
the effect of the motes dancing in the setting sun. At another 
time, a friend coming into his painting-room when he was 
sitting on the ground in a melancholy posture, observed that 
his picture looked like a landscape after a shower : he started 
up with the greatest delight, and said, 'That is the effect 
I intended to produce, but thought I had failed.' Wilson 
was neglected; and, by degrees, neglected his art to apply 
himself to brandy. His hand became unsteady, so that it 
was only by repeated attempts that he could reach the place, 
or produce the effect he aimed at; and when he had done 
a little to a picture, he would say to any acquaintance who 
chanced to drop in, 'I have painted enough for one day: 
come, let us go somewhere.' It was not so Claude left his 
pictures, or his studies on the banks of the Tiber, to go in 
search of other enjoyments, or ceased to gaze upon the glittering 
sunny vales and distant hills; and while his eye drank in 



92 On the Pleasure of Painting I 

the clear sparkling hues and lovely forms of nature, his hand 
stamped them on the lucid canvas to last there for ever ! — One 
of the most delightful parts of my life was one fine summer, 
when I used to walk out of an evening to catch the last light 
of the sun, gemming the green slopes or russet lawns, and 
gilding tower or tree, while the blue sky gradually turning 
to purple and gold, or skirted with dusky grey, hung its broad 
marble pavement over all, as we see it in the great master of 
Italian landscape. But to come to a more particular explana- 
tion of the subject. 

The first head I ever tried to paint was an old woman with 
the upper part of the face shaded by her bonnet, and I certainly 
laboured it with great perseverance. It took me numberless 
sittings to do it. I have it by me still, and sometimes look 
at it with surprise, to think how much pains were thrown 
away to little purpose, — yet not altogether in vain if it taught 
me to see good in every thing, and to know that there is nothing 
vulgar in nature seen with the eye of science or of true art. 
Refinement creates beauty everywhere: it is the grossness of 
the spectator that discovers nothing but grossness in the 
object. Be this as it may, I spared no pains to do my best. 
If art was long, I thought that life was so too at that moment. 
I got in the general effect the first day; and pleased and 
surprised enough I was at my success. The rest was a work 
of time — of weeks and months (if need were) of patient toil 
and careful finishing. I had seen an old head by Rembrandt 
at Burleigh-House, and if I could produce a head at all like 
Rembrandt in a year, in my life-time, it would be glory and 
felicity, and wealth and fame enough for me ! The head 
I had seen at Burleigh was an exact and wonderful fac-simile 
of nature, and I resolved to make mine (as nearly as I could) 
an exact fac-simile of nature. I did not then, nor do I now 
beHeve, with Sir Joshua, that the perfection of art consists 
in giving general appearances without individual details, but 
in giving general appearances with individual details. Other- 
wise, I had done my work the first day. But I saw something 
more in nature than general effect, and I thought it worth 
my while to give it in the picture. There was a gorgeous 
effect of light and shade: but there was a delicacy as well 
as depth in the chiaro scuro^ which I was bound to follow into 



On the Pleasure of Painting I 93 

all its dim and scarce perceptible variety of tone and shadow. 
Then I had to make the transition from a strong hght to as 
dark a shade, preserving the masses, but gradually softening 
off the intermediate parts. It was so in nature : the difficulty 
was to make it so in the copy. I tried, and failed again and 
again; I strove harder, and succeeded as I thought. The 
wrinkles in Rembrandt were not hard lines; but broken and 
irregular. I saw the same appearance in nature, and strained 
every nerve to give it. If I could hit off this edgy appearance, 
and insert the reflected light in the furrows of old age in half 
a morning, I did not think I had lost a day. Beneath the 
shrivelled yellow parchment look of the skin, there was here 
and there a streak of the blood colour tinging the face; this 
I made a point of conveying, and did not cease to compare 
what I saw with what I did (with jealous lynx-eyed watchful- 
ness) till I succeeded to the best of my ability and judgment. 
How many revisions were there ! How many attempts to 
catch an expression which I had seen the day before ! How 
often did we try to get the old position, and wait for the return 
of the same light ! There was a puckering up of the lips, 
a cautious introversion of the eye under the shadow of the 
bonnet, indicative of the feebleness and suspicion of old age, 
which at last we managed, after many trials and some quarrels, 
to a tolerable nicety. The picture was never finished, and 
1 might have gone on with it to the present hour^. I used to 
set it on the ground when my day's work was done, and saw 
revealed to me with swimming eyes the birth of new hopes, 
and of a new world of objects. The painter thus learns to 
look at nature with different eyes. He before saw her 'as in 
a glass darkly, but now face to face.' He understands the 
texture and meaning of the visible universe, and 'sees into 
the life of things,' not by the help of mechanical instruments, 
but of the improved exercise of his faculties, and an intimate 
sympathy with nature. The meanest thing is not lost upon 
him, for he looks at it with an eye to itself, not merely to his 
own vanity or interest, or the opinion of the world. Even 
where there is neither beauty nor use — if that ever were — 

1 It is at present covered with a thick slough of oil and varnish (the 
perishable vehicle of the English school) like an envelope of gold-beaters' 
skin, so as to be hardly visible. 



94 On the Pleasure of Painting I 

still there is truth, and a sufficient source of gratification in 
the indulgence of curiosity and activity of mind. The 
humblest painter is a true scholar; and the best of scholars — 
the scholar of nature. For myself, and for the real comfort 
and satisfaction of the thing, I had rather have been Jan 
Steen, or Gerard Dow, than the greatest casuist or philologer 
that ever lived. The painter does not view things in clouds 
or 'mist, the common gloss of theologians,' but applies the 
same standard of truth and disinterested spirit of inquiry, 
that influence his daily practice, to other subjects. He per- 
ceives form, he distinguishes character. He reads men and 
books with an intuitive eye. He is a critic as well as a con- 
noisseur. The conclusions he draws are clear and convincing, 
because they are taken from the things themselves. He is 
not a fanatic, a dupe, or a slave : for the habit of seeing for 
himself also disposes him to judge for himself. The most 
sensible men I know (taken as a class) are painters; that is, 
they are the most lively observers of what passes in the world 
about them, and the closest observers of what passes in their 
own minds. From their profession they in general mix more 
with the world than authors; and if they have not the same 
fund of acquired knowledge, are obliged to rely more on 
individual sagacity. I might mention the names of Opie, 
Fuseli, Northcote, as persons distinguished for striking de- 
scription and acquaintance with the subtle traits of character^. 
Painters in ordinary society, or in obscure situations where 
their value is not known, and they are treated with neglect 
and indifference, have sometimes a forward self-sufficiency of 
manner : but this is not so much their fault as that of others. 
Perhaps their want of regular education may also be in fault 
in such cases. Richardson, who is very tenacious of the respect 
in which the profession ought to be held, tells a story of 
Michael Angelo, that after a quarrel between him and Pope 
Julius H 'upon account of a slight the artist conceived the 

^ Men in business, who are answerable with their fortunes for the 
consequences of their opinions, and are therefore accustomed to ascertain 
pretty accurately the grounds on which they act, before they commit them- 
selves on the event, are often men of remarkably quick and sound judgments. 
Artists in like manner must know tolerably well what they are about, 
before they can bring the result of their observations to the test of ocular 
demonstration. 



On the Pleasure of Painting I 95 

pontiff had put upon him, Michael Angelo was introduced by 
a bishop, who, thinking to serve the artist by it, made it an 
argument that the Pope should be reconciled to him, because 
men of his profession were commonly ignorant, and of no 
consequence otherwise: his holiness, enraged at the bishop, 
struck him with his staff, and told him, it was he that was the 
blockhead, and affronted the man himself would not offend; 
the prelate was driven out of the chamber, and Michael 
Angelo had the Pope's benediction accompanied with presents. 
This bishop had fallen into the vulgar error, and was rebuked 
accordingly.' 

Besides the exercise of the mind, painting exercises the 
body. It is a mechanical as well as a liberal art. To do 
any thing, to dig a hole in the ground, to plant a cabbage, 
to hit a mark, to move a shuttle, to work a pattern, — in a 
word, to attempt to produce any effect, and to succeed, has 
something in it that gratifies the love of power, and carries 
off the restless activity of the mind of man. Indolence is 
a delightful but distressing state : we must be doing something 
to be happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to 
the instinctive tendencies of the human frame; and painting 
combines them both incessantly^. The hand furnishes a 
practical test of the correctness of the eye; and the eye thus 
admonished, imposes fresh tasks of skill and industry upon 
the hand. Every stroke tells, as the verifying of a new 
truth; and every new observation, the instant it is made, 
passes into an act and emanation of the will. Every step is 
nearer what we wish, and yet there is always more to do. 
In spite of the facility, the fluttering grace, the evanescent 
hues, that play round the pencil of Rubens and Vandyke, 
however I may admire, I do not envy them this power so 
much as I do the slow, patient, laborious execution of 
Correggio, Leonardo da Vinci, and Andrea del Sarto, where 
every touch appears conscious of its charge, emulous of truth, 
and where the painful artist has so distinctly wrought. 
That you might almost say his picture thought! 

In the one case, the colours seem breathed on the canvas 
as by magic, the work and the wonder of a moment: in the 

^ The famous Schiller used to say, that he found the great happiness 
of life, after all, to consist in the discharge of some mechanical duty. 



96 On the Pleasure of Painting I 

other, they seem inlaid in the body of the work, and as if it 
took the artist years of unremitting labour, and of delightful 
never-ending progress to perfection^. Who would wish ever 
to come to the close of such works,— not to dwell on them, 
to return to them, to be wedded to them to the last ? 
Rubens, with his florid, rapid style, complained that when he 
had just learned his art, he should be forced to die. Leonardo, 
in the slow advances of his, had lived long enough! 

Painting is not, like writing, what is properly understood 
by a sedentary employment. It requires not indeed a strong, 
but a continued and steady exertion of muscular power. 
The precision and delicacy of the manual operation makes 
up for the want of vehemence, — as to balance himself for any 
time in the same position the rope-dancer must strain every 
nerve. Painting for a whole morning gives one as excellent 
an appetite for one's dinner, as old Abraham Tucker acquired 
for his by riding over Banstead Downs. It is related of 
Sir Joshua Reynolds, that 'he took no other exercise than 
what he used in his painting-room,' — the writer means, in 
walking backwards and forwards to look at his picture; but 
the act of painting itself, of laying on the colours in the proper 
place, and proper quantity, was a much harder exercise than 
this alternate receding from and returning to the picture. 
This last would be rather a relaxation and relief than an effort. 
It is not to be wondered at, that an artist like Sir Joshua, 
who delighted so much in the sensual and practical part of 
his art, should have found himself at a considerable loss when 
the decay of his sight precluded him, for the last year or two 
of his life, from the following up of his profession, — ' the source,' 
according to his own remark, 'of thirty years uninterrupted 
enjoyment and prosperity to him.' It is only those who never 
think at all, or else who have accustomed themselves to brood 
incessantly on abstract ideas, that never feel ennui. 

To give one instance more, and then I will have done with 
this rambhng discourse. One of my first attempts was a 
picture of my father, who was then in a green old age, with 
strong-marked features, and scarred with the small-pox. 

■^ The rich impasting of Titian and Giorgione combines something of 
the advantages of both these styles, the felicity of the one with the 
carefulness of the other, and is perhaps to be preferred to either. 



On the Pleasure of Painting I 97 

I drew it with a broad light crossing the face, looking down, with 
spectacles on, reading. The book was Shaftesbury's Charac- 
teristics, in a fine old binding, with Gribelin's etchings. My 
father would as lieve it had been any other book ; but for him 
to read was to be content, was * riches fineless.' The sketch 
promised well; and I set to work to finish it, determined to 
spare no time nor pains. My father was willing to sit as long 
as I pleased ; for there is a natural desire in the mind of man 
to sit for one's picture, to be the object of continued attention, 
to have one's likeness multiplied ; and besides his satisfaction 
in the picture, he had some pride in the artist, though he would 
rather I should have written a sermon than painted like 
Rembrandt or like Raphael. Those winter days, with the 
gleams of sunshine coming through the chapel-windows, and 
cheered by the notes of the robin-redbreast in our garden 
(that 'ever in the haunch of winter sings') — as my afternoon's 
work drew to a close, — were among the happiest of my life. 
When I gave the effect I intended to any part of the picture 
for which I had prepared my colours, when I imitated the 
roughness of the skin by a lucky stroke of the pencil, when 
I hit the clear pearly tone of a vein, when I gave the ruddy 
complexion of health, the blood circulating under the broad 
shadows of one side of the face, I thought my fortune made; 
or rather it was already more than made, in my fancying 
that I might one day be able to say with Correggio, '/ also 
am a painter!^ It was an idle thought, a boy's conceit; but 
it did not make me less happy at the time. I used regularly 
to set my work in the chair to look at it through the long 
evenings; and many a time did I return to take leave of it 
before I could go to bed at night. I remember sending it 
wdth a throbbing heart to the Exhibition, and seeing it hung 
up there by the side of one of the Honourable Mr Skeffington 
(now Sir George). There was nothing in common between 
them, but that they were the portraits of two very good- 
natured men. I think, but am not sure, that I finished 
this portrait (or another afterwards) on the same day that 
the news of the battle of Austerlitz came ; I walked out in 
the afternoon, and, as I returned, saw the evening star set 
over a poor man's cottage with other thoughts and feelings 
than I shall ever have again. Oh for the revolution of the 



gS On the Pleasure of Painting I 

great Platonic year, that those times might come over again ! 
I could sleep out the three hundred and sixty-five thousand 
intervening years very contentedly ! — The picture is left : 
the table, the chair, the window where I learned to construe 
Livy, the chapel where my father preached, remain where 
they were ; but he himself is gone to rest, full of years, of faith, 
of hope, and charity ! 



ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING II 

The painter not only takes a delight in nature, he has 
a new and exquisite source of pleasure opened to him in the 
study and contemplation of works of art — 

Whate'er Lorraine light touch'd with soft'ning hue, 
Or savage Rosa dash'd, or learned Poussin drew. 

He turns aside to view a country-gentleman's seat with eager 
looks, thinking it may contain some of the rich products of 
art. There is an air round Lord Radnor's park, for there 
hang the two Claudes, the Morning and Evening of the Roman 
Empire — round Wilton-house, for there is Vandyke's picture 
of the Pembroke family — round Blenheim, for there is his 
picture of the Duke of Buckingham's children, and the most 
magnificent collection of Rubenses in the world — at Knowsley, 
for there is Rembrandt's Hand-writing on the Wall — and at 
Burleigh, for there are some of Guide's angelic heads. The 
young artist makes a pilgrimage to each of these places, eyes 
them wistfully at a distance, 'bosomed high in tufted trees,' 
and feels an interest in them of which the owner is scarce 
conscious: he enters the well-swept walks and echoing arch- 
ways, passes the threshold, is led through wainscoted rooms, 
is shown the furniture, the rich hangings, the tapestry, the 
massy services of plate — and, at last, is ushered into the room 
where his treasure is, the idol of his vows — some speaking 
face or bright landscape! It is stamped on his brain, and 
lives there thenceforward, a tally for nature, and a test of 
art. He furnishes out the chambers of the mind from the 
spoils of time, picks and chooses which shall have the best 
places — nearest his heart. He goes away richer than he came, 
richer than the possessor; and thinks that he may one day 
return, when he perhaps shall have done something like them, 
or even from failure shall have learned to admire truth and 
genius more. 



100 On the Pleasure of Painting II 

My first initiation in the mysteries of the art was at the 
Orleans Gallery: it was there I formed my taste, such as 
it is ; so that I am irreclaimably of the old school in painting. 
I was staggered when I saw the works there collected, and 
looked at them with wondering and with longing eyes. A mist 
passed away from my sight : the scales fell off. A new sense 
came upon me, a new heaven and a new earth stood before 
me. I saw the soul speaking in the face — 'hands that the 
rod of empire had swayed' in mighty ages past — 'a forked 
mountain or blue promontory,' 

with trees upon't 

That nod unto the world, and mock our eyes with air. 

Old Time had unlocked his treasures, and Fame stood portress 
at the door. We had all heard of the names of Titian, Raphael, 
Guido, Domenichino, the Caracci — but to see them face to 
face, to be in the same room with their deathless productions, 
was Hke breaking some mighty spell — was almost an effect of 
necromancy! From that time I lived in a world of pictures. 
Battles, sieges, speeches in parhament seemed mere idle noise 
and fury, 'signifying nothing,' compared with those mighty 
works and dreaded names that spoke to me in the eternal 
silence of thought. This was the more remarkable, as it was 
but a short time before that I was not only totally ignorant 
of, but insensible to the beauties of art. As an instance, 
I remember that one afternoon I was reading the Provoked 
Husband with the highest relish, with a green woody landscape 
of Ruysdael or Hobbima just before me, at which I looked 
off the book now and then, and wondered what there could 
be in that sort of work to satisfy or delight the mind — at the 
same time asking myself, as a speculative question, whether 
I should dver feel an interest in it like what I took in reading 
Vanbrugh and Gibber? 

I had made some progress in painting when I went to 
the Louvre to study, and I never did any thing afterwards. 
I never shall forget conning over the Catalogue which a friend 
lent me just before I set out. The pictures, the names of the 
painters, seemed to relish in the mouth. There was one of 
Titian's Mistress at her toilette. Even the colours with which 
the painter had adorned her hair were not more golden, more 



On the Pleasure of Painting II loi 

amiable to sight, than those which played round and tantalised 
my fancy ere I saw the picture. There were two portraits 
by the same hand — 'A young Nobleman with a glove' — 
Another, 'a companion to it' — I read the description over and 
over with fond expectancy, and filled up the imaginary outHne 
with whatever I could conceive of grace, and dignity, and an 
antique gusto — all but equal to the original. There was the 
Transfiguration too. With what awe I saw it in my mind's 
eye, and was overshadowed with the spirit of the artist ! 
Not to have been disappointed with these works afterwards, 
was the highest compliment I can pay to their transcendant 
merits. Indeed, it was from seeing other works of the same 
great masters that I had formed a vague, but no disparaging 
idea of these. — The first day I got there, I was kept for some 
time in the French Exhibition-room, and thought I should 
not be able to get a sight of the old masters. I just caught 
a peep at them through the door (vile hindrance !) like looking 
out of purgatory into paradise — from Poussin's noble mellow- 
looking landscapes to where Rubens hung out his gaudy 
banner, and down the glimmering vista to the rich jewels of 
Titian and the Italian school. At last, by much importunity, 
I was admitted, and lost not an instant in making use of my 
new privilege. — It was un beau jour to me. I marched de- 
lighted through a quarter of a mile of the proudest efforts 
of the mind of man, a whole creation of genius, a universe of 
art ! I ran the gauntlet of all the schools from the bottom 
to the top; and in the end got admitted into the inner room, 
where they had been repairing some of their greatest works. 
Here the Transfiguration, the St Peter Martyr, and the 
St Jerome of Domenichino stood on the floor, as if they had 
bent their knees, like camels stooping, to unlade their riches 
to the spectator. On one side, on an easel, ^stood Hippolito de 
Medici (a portrait by Titian) with a boar-spear in his hand, 
looking through those he saw, till you turned away from the 
keen glance: and thrown together in heaps were landscapes 
of the same hand, green pastoral hills and vales, and shepherds 
piping to their mild mistresses underneath the flowering 
shade. Reader, 'if thou hast not seen the Louvre, thou art 
damned!' — for thou hast not seen the choicest remains of 
the works of art; or thou hast not seen all these together, 



102 On the Pleasure of Painting II 

with their mutually reflected glories. I say nothing of the 
statues; for I know but Httle of sculpture, and never liked 
any till I saw the Elgin marbles.... Here, for four months 
together, I strolled and studied, and daily heard the warning 
sound — 'Quatre heures fassees, il faut fermer, Citoyens,'' (ah! 
why did they ever change their style ?) muttered in coarse 
provincial French; and brought away with me some loose 
draughts and fragments, which I have been forced to part 
with, like drops of life-blood, for 'hard money.' How often, 
thou tenantless mansion of godlike magnificence — how often 
has my heart since gone a pilgrimage to thee! 

It has been made a question, whether the artist, or the 
mere man of taste and natural sensibility, receives most 
pleasure from the contemplation of works of art ? and I think 
this question might be answered by another as a sort of 
experimentum cruets, namely, whether any one out of that 
'number numberless' of mere gentlemen and amateurs, who 
visited Paris at the period here spoken of, felt as much interest, 
as much pride or pleasure in this display of the most striking 
monuments of art as the humblest student would ? The first 
entrance into the Louvre would be only one of the events of 
his journey, not an event in his life, remembered ever after 
with thankfulness and regret. He would explore it with the 
same unmeaning curiosity and idle wonder as he would the 
Regalia in the Tower, or the Botanic Garden in the Thuilleries, 
but not with the fond enthusiasm of an artist. How should 
he.? His is 'casual fruition, joyless, unendeared.' But the 
painter is wedded to his art, the mistress, queen, and idol 
of his soul. He has embarked his all in it, fame, time, fortune, 
peace of mind, his hopes in youth, his consolation in age: 
and shall he not feel a more intense interest in whatever 
relates to it than the mere indolent trifler ? Natural sensibility 
alone, without the entire application of the mind to that one 
object, will not enable the possessor to sympathise with all 
the degrees of beauty and power in the conception of a Titian 
or a Correggio ; but it is he only who does this, who follows them 
into all their force and matchless grace, that does or can feel 
their full value. Knowledge is pleasure as well as power. 
No one but the artist who has studied nature and contended 
with the difficulties of art, can be aware of the beauties, or 



On the Pleasure of Painting II 103 

intoxicated with a passion for painting. No one who has 
not devoted his life and soul to the pursuit of art, can feel 
the same exultation in its brightest ornaments and loftiest 
triumphs which an artist does. Where the treasure is, there 
the heart is also. It is now seventeen years since I was 
studying in the Louvre (and I have long since given up all 
thoughts of the art as a profession), but long after I returned, 
and even still, I sometimes dream of being there again— of 
asking for the old pictures — and not finding them, or finding 
them changed or faded from what they were, I cry myself 
awake! What gentleman-amateur ever does this at such 
a distance of time, — that is, ever received pleasure or took 
interest enough in them to produce so lasting an impres- 



sion 



But it is said that if a person had the same natural taste, 
and the same acquired knowledge as an artist, without the 
petty interests and technical notions, he would derive a purer 
pleasure from seeing a fine portrait, a fine landscape, and so 
on. This however is not so much begging the question as 
asking an impossibility: he cannot have the same insight 
into the end without having studied the means; nor the 
same love of art without the same habitual and exclusive 
attachment to it. Painters are, no doubt, often actuated by 
jealousy, partiality, and a sordid attention to that only which 

they find useful to themselves in painting. W has been 

seen poring over the texture of a Dutch cabinet-picture, so 
that he could not see the picture itself. But this is the per- 
version and pedantry of the profession, not its true or genuine 

spirit. If W had never looked at any thing but megilps 

and handling, he never would have put the soul of life and 
manners into his pictures, as he has done. Another objection 
is, that the instrumental parts of the art, the means, the first 
rudiments, paints, oils, and brushes, are painful and disgusting; 
and that the consciousness of the difficulty and anxiety with 
which perfection has been attained, must take away from 
the pleasure of the finest performance. This, however, is only 
an additional proof of the greater pleasure derived by the 
artist from his profession; for these things which are said 
to interfere with and destroy the common interest in works 
of art, do not disturb him; he never once thinks of them, he 



104 On the Pleasure of Painting II 

is absorbed in the pursuit of a higher object; he is intent, 
not on the means but the end; he is taken up, not with the 
difficulties, but with the triumph over them. As in the case 
of the anatomist, who overlooks many things in the eagerness 
of his search after abstract truth; or the alchemist who, 
while he is raking into his soot and furnaces, lives in a golden 
dream; a lesser gives way to a greater object. But it is 
pretended that the painter may be supposed to submit to the 
unpleasant part of the process only for the sake of the fame or 
profit in view. So far is this from being a true state of the 
case, that I will venture to say, in the instance of a friend 
of mine who has lately succeeded in an important undertaking 
in his art, that not all the fame he has acquired, not all the 
money he has received from thousands of admiring spectators, 
not all the newspaper puffs, — nor even the praise of the 
Edinburgh Review, — not all these, put together, ever gave 
him at any time the same genuine, undoubted satisfaction 
as any one half-hour employed in the ardent and propitious 
pursuit of his art — in finishing to his heart's content a foot, 
a hand, or even a piece of drapery. What is the state of mind 
of an artist while he is at work ? He is then in the act of 
realising the highest idea he can form of beauty or grandeur : 
he conceives, he embodies that which he understands and 
loves best : that is, he is in full and perfect possession of that 
which is to him the source of the highest happiness and 
intellectual excitement which he can enjoy. 

In short, as a conclusion to this argument, I will mention 
a circumstance which fell under my knowledge the other day. 
A friend had bought a print of Titian's Mistress, the same 
to which I have alluded above. He was anxious to shew it 
me on this account. I told him it was a spirited engraving, 
but it had not the look of the original. I beheve he thought 
this fastidious, till I offered to shew him a rough sketch of it, 
which I had by me. Having seen this, he said he perceived 
exactly what I meant, and could not bear to look at the print 
afterwards. He had good sense enough to see the difference 
in the individual instance; but a person better acquainted 
with Titian's manner and with art in general, that is, of a 
more cultivated and refined taste, would know that it was 
a bad print, without having any immediate model to compare 



On the Pleasure of Painting II 105 

it with. He would perceive with a glance of the eye, with 
a sort of instinctive feeHng, that it was hard, and without 
that bland, expansive, and nameless expression which always 
distinguished Titian's most famous works. Any one who is 
accustomed to a head in a picture can never reconcile himself 
to a print from it : but to the ignorant they are both the same. 
To a vulgar eye there is no difference between a Guido and a 
daub, between a penny-print or the vilest scrawl, and the 
most finished performance. In other words, all that excellence 
which lies between these two extremes, — all, at least, that 
marks the excess above mediocrity,— all that constitutes true 
beauty, harmony, refinement, grandeur, is lost upon the 
common observer. But it is from this point that the delight, 
the glowing raptures of the true adept commence. An un- 
informed spectator may Hke an ordinary drawing better than 
the ablest connoisseur; but for that very reason he cannot 
like the highest specimens of art so well. The refinements 
not only of execution but of truth and nature are inaccessible 
to unpractised eyes. The exquisite gradations in a sky of 
Claude's are not perceived by such persons, and consequently 
the harmony cannot be felt. Where there is no conscious 
apprehension, there can be no conscious pleasure. Wonder 
at the first sight of works of art may be the effect of ignorance 
and novelty; but real admiration and permanent delight in 
them are the growth of taste and knowledge. 'I would not 
wish to have your eyes,' said a good-natured man to a critic, 
who was finding fault with a picture, in which the other saw 
no blemish. Why so ? The idea which prevented him from 
admiring this inferior production was a higher idea of truth 
and beauty which was ever present with him, and a continual 
source of pleasing and lofty contemplations. It may be 
different in a taste for outward luxuries and the privations 
of mere sense; but the idea of perfection, which acts as an 
intellectual foil, is always an addition, a support, and a proud 
consolation ! 

Richardson, in his Essays, which ought to be better known, 
has left some striking examples of the felicity and infelicity 
of artists, both as it relates to their external fortune, and to 
the practice of their art. In speaking of the knowledge of 
hands, he exclaims — 'When one is considering a picture or 



io6 On the Pleasure of Painting II 

a drawing, one at the same time thinks this was done by him^ 
who had many extraordinary endowments of body and mind, 
but was withal very capricious; who was honoured in Hfe 
and death, expiring in the arms of one of the greatest princes 
of that age, Francis I King of France, who loved him as a 
friend. Another is of him^ who lived a long and happy life, 
beloved of Charles V emperour ; and many others of the first 
princes of Europe. When one has another in hand, we think 
this was done by one^ who so excelled in three arts, as that 
any of them in that degree had rendered him worthy of 
immortality; and one moreover that durst contend with his 
sovereign (one of the haughtiest popes that ever was) upon 
a slight offered to him, and extricated himself with honour. 
Another is the work of him* who, without any one exterior 
advantage but mere strength of genius, had the most sublime 
imaginations, and executed them accordingly, yet lived and 
died obscurely. Another we shall consider as the work of 
him^ who restored Painting when it had almost sunk; of him 
whom art made honourable, but who, neglecting and despising 
greatness with a sort of cynical pride, was treated suitably 
to the figure he gave himself, not his intrinsic worth; which, 
not having philosophy enough to bear it, broke his heart. 
Another is done by one^ who (on the contrary) was a fine 
gentleman, and lived in great magnificence, and was much 
honoured by his own and foreign princes ; who was a courtier, 
a statesman, and a painter; and so much all these, that when 
he acted in either character, that seemed to be his business, 
and the others his diversion. I say when one thus reflects, 
besides the pleasure arising from the beauties and excellences 
of the work, the fine ideas it gives us of natural things, the noble 
way of thinking it may suggest to us, an additional pleasure 
results from the above considerations. But, oh ! the pleasure, 
when a connoisseur and lover of art has before him a picture 
or drawing, of which he can say this is the hand, these are 
the thoughts of him' who was one of the politest, best-natured 
gentlemen that ever was; and beloved and assisted by the 

^ Leonardo da Vinci. ^ Titian. 

^ Michael Angelo. * Correggio. 

^ Annibal Caracci. * Rubens. 
' Rafaelle. 



On the Pleasure of Painting II 107 

greatest wits and the greatest men then in Rome: of him 
who lived in great fame, honour, and magnificence, and died 
extremely lamented; and missed a Cardinal's hat only by 
dying a few months too soon; but was particularly esteemed 
and favoured by two Popes, the only ones who filled the chair 
of St Peter in his time, and as great men as ever sat there 
since that apostle, if at least he ever did : one, in short, who 
could have been a Leonardo, a Michael Angelo, a Titian, a 
Correggio, a Parmegiano, an Annibal, a Rubens, or any other 
whom he pleased, but none of them could ever have been a 
Rafaelle.' Page 251. 

The same writer speaks feelingly of the change in the 
style of different artists from their change of fortune, and as 
the circumstances are little known, I will quote the passage 
relating to two of them. 

'Guido Reni from a prince-like affluence of fortune (the 
just reward of his angelic works) fell to a condition like that 
of a hired servant to one who supplied him with money for 
what he did at a fixed rate ; and that by his being bewitched 
with a passion for gaming, whereby he lost vast sums of money ; 
and even what he got in this his state of servitude by day, he 
commonly lost at night: nor could he ever be cured of this 
cursed madness. Those of his works, therefore, which he did 
in this unhappy part of his life, may easily be conceived to 
be in a different style to what he did before, which in some 
things, that is, in the airs of his heads (in the gracious kind), 
had a delicacy in them peculiar to himself, and almost more 
than human. But I must not multiply instances. Parmegiano 
is one that alone takes in all the several kinds of variation, and 
all the degrees of goodness, from the lowest of the indifferent 
up to the sublime. I can produce evident proofs of this in 
so easy a gradation, that one cannot deny but that he that 
did this, might do that, and very probably did so; and thus 
one may ascend and descend, like the angels on Jacob's ladder, 
whose foot was upon the earth, but its top reached to Heaven. 

'And this great man had his unlucky circumstance: he 
became mad after the philosopher's stone, and did but very 
little in painting or drawing afterwards. Judge what that was, 
and whether there was not an alteration of style from what 
he had done, before this devil possessed him. His creditors 



io8 On the Pleasure of Painting II 

endeavoured to exorcise him, and did him some good, for he 
set himself to work again in his own way: but if a drawing 
I have of a Lucretia be that he made for his last picture, as 
it probably is (Vasari says that was the subject of it), it is 
an evident proof of his decay : it is good indeed, but it wants 
much of the delicacy which is commonly seen in his works; 
and so I always thought before I knew or imagined it to be 
done in this his ebb of genius.' Page 153. 

We have had two artists of our own country, whose fate 
has been as singular as it was hard. Gandy was a portrait- 
painter in the beginning of the last century, whose heads were 
said to have come near to Rembrandt's, and he was the un- 
doubted prototype of Sir Joshua Reynolds's style. Yet his 
name has scarcely been heard of; and his reputation, like his 
works, never extended beyond his own county. What did 
he think of himself and of a fame so bounded ! Did he ever 
dream he was indeed an artist ? Or how did this feeling in 
him differ from the vulgar conceit of the lowest pretender? 
The best known of his works is a portrait of an alderman of 
Exeter, in some public building in that city. 

Poor Dan. Stringer! Forty years ago he had the finest 
hand and the clearest eye of any artist of his time, and produced 
heads and drawings that would not have disgraced a brighter 
period in the art. But he fell a martyr (like Burns) to the 
society of country-gentlemen, and then of those whom they 
would consider as more his equals. I saw him many years 
ago, when he treated the masterly sketches he had by him 
(one in particular of the group of citizens in Shakespear 
'swallowing the tailor's news') as 'bastards of his genius, 
not his children'; and seemed to have given up all thoughts 
of his art. Whether he is since dead, I cannot say: the world 
do not so much as know that he ever lived ! 



THE FIGHT 

The fight, the fight's the thing, 

Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king. 

Where there's a will, there"" s a way. — I said so to myself, 
as I walked down Chancery-lane, about half-past six o'clock 
on Monday the loth of December, to inquire at Jack Randall's 
where the fight the next day was to be; I found 'the proverb' 
nothing 'musty' in the present instance. I was determined 
to see this fight, come what would, and see it I did, in great 
style. It was my first fight, yet it more than answered my 
expectations. Ladies ! it is to you I dedicate this description ; 
nor let it seem out of character for the fair to notice the exploits 
of the brave. Courage and modesty are the old English virtues ; 
and may they never look cold and askance on one another! 
Think, ye fairest of the fair, loveliest of the lovely kind, ye 
practisers of soft enchantment, how many more ye kill with 
poisoned baits than ever fell in the ring; and listen with 
subdued air and without shuddering, to a tale tragic only in 
appearance, and sacred to the Fancy! 

I was going down Chancery-lane, thinking to ask at Jack 
Randall's where the fight was to be, when looking through the 
glass-door of the Hole in the Wall, I heard a gentleman asking 
the same question at Mrs Randall, as the author of Waverley 
would express it. Now Mrs Randall stood answering the 
gentleman's question, with the authenticity of the lady of 
the Champion of the Light Weights. Thinks I, I'll wait till 
this person comes out, and learn from him how it is. For to 
say a truth, I was not fond of going into this house of call for 
heroes and philosophers, ever since the owner of it (for Jack 
is no gentleman) threatened once upon a time to kick me out 
of doors for wanting a mutton-chop at his hospitable board, 
when the conqueror in thirteen battles was more full of blue 
ruin than of gond manners. I was the more mortified at this 



no The Fight 

repulse, inasmuch as I had heard Mr James Simpkins, hosier 
in the Strand, one day when the character of the Hole in the 
Wall was brought in question, observe — 'The house is a very 
good house, and the company quite genteel : I have been there 
myself!' Remembering this unkind treatment of mine host, 
to which mine hostess was also a party, and not wishing to 
put her in unquiet thoughts at a time jubilant Hke the present, 
I waited at the door, when, who should issue forth but my 
friend Jo. Toms, and turning suddenly up Chancery-lane with 
that quick jerk and impatient stride which distinguishes a 
lover of the Fancy, I said, 'I'll be hanged if that fellow is 
not going to the fight, and is on his way to get me to go with 
him.' So it proved in effect, and we agreed to adjourn to my 
lodgings to discuss measures with that cordiality which makes 
old friends like new, and new friends like old, on great occasions. 
We are cold to others only when we are dull in ourselves, 
and have neither thoughts nor feelings to impart to them. 
Give a man a topic in his head, a throb of pleasure in his 
heart, and he will be glad to share it with the first person he 
meets. Toms and I, though we seldom meet, were an alter 
idem on this memorable occasion, and had not an idea that 
we did not candidly impart; and 'so carelessly did we fleet 
the time,' that I wish no better, when there is another fight, 
than to have him for a companion on my journey down, and 
to return with my friend Jack Pigott, talking of what was to 
happen or of what did happen, with a noble subject always 
at hand, and liberty to digress to others whenever they 
offered. Indeed, on my repeating the lines from Spenser in 
an involuntary fit of enthusiasm. 

What more felicity can fall to creature, 
Than to enjoy delight with liberty? 

my last-named ingenious friend stopped me by saying that 
this, translated into the vulgate, meant ''Going to see a fight.'' 

Jo. Toms and I could not settle about the method of going 
down. He said there was a caravan, he understood, to start 
from Tom Belcher's at two, which would go there right out 
and back again the next day. Now I never travel all night, 
and said I should get a cast to Newbury by one of the mails. 
Jo. swore the thing was impossible, and I could only answer 



The Fight iii 

that I had made up my mind to it. In short, he seemed to 
me to waver, said he only came to see if I was going, had 
letters to write, a cause coming on the day after, and faintly 
said at parting (for I was bent on setting out that moment) — 
'Well, we meet at Philippi!' I made the best of my way to 
Piccadilly. The mail coach stand was bare. 'They are all 
gone,' said I — 'this is always the way with me — in the instant 
I lose the future — if I had not stayed to pour out that last 
cup of tea, I should have been just in time' — and cursing 
my folly and ill-luck together, without inquiring at the 
coach-office whether the mails were gone or not, I walked on 
in despite, and to punish my own dilatoriness and want of 
determination. At any rate, I would not turn back : I might 
get to Hounslow, or perhaps farther, to be on my road the 
next morning. I passed Hyde Park Corner (my Rubicon), 
and trusted to fortune. Suddenly I heard the clattering of 
a Brentford stage, and the fight rushed full upon my fancy. 
I argued (not unwisely) that even a Brentford coachman 
was better company than my own thoughts (such as they were 
just then), and at his invitation mounted the box with him. 
I immediately stated my case to him — namely, my quarrel 
with myself for missing the Bath or Bristol mail, and my 
determination to get on in consequence as well as I could, 
without any disparagement or insulting comparison between 
longer or shorter stages. It is a maxim with me that stage- 
coaches, and consequently stage-coachmen, are respectable 
in proportion to the distance they have to travel : so I said 
nothing on that subject to my Brentford friend. Any incipient 
tendency to an abstract proposition, or (as he might have 
construed it) to a personal reflection of this kind, was however 
nipped in the bud; for I had no sooner declared indignantly 
that I had missed the mails, than he flatly denied that they 
were gone along, and lo! at the instant three of them drove 
by in rapid, provoking, orderly succession, as if they would 
devour the ground before them. Here again I seemed in 
the contradictory situation of the man in Dryden who exclaims, 

1 follow Fate, which does too hard pursue ! 

If I had stopped to inquire at the White Horse Cellar, which 
would not have taken me a minute, I should now have been 



112 The Fight 

driving down the road in all the dignified unconcern and 
ideal perfection of mechanical conveyance. The Bath mail 
I had set my mind upon, and I had missed it, as I missed every 
thing else, by my own absurdity, in putting the will for the 
deed, and aiming at ends without employing means. 'Sir,' 
said he of the Brentford, 'the Bath mail will be up presently, my 
brother-in-law drives it, and I will engage to stop him if there 
is a place empty.' I almost doubted my good genius; but, 
sure enough, up it drove like lightning, and stopped directly 
at the call of the Brentford Jehu. I would not have believed 
this possible, but the brother-in-law of a mail-coach driver 
is himself no mean man. I was transferred without loss of 
time from the top of one coach to that of the other, desired the 
guard to pay my fare to the Brentford coachman for me as 
I had no change, was accommodated with a great coat, put 
up my umbrella to keep off a drizzling mist, and we began 
to cut through the air like an arrow. The mile-stones dis- 
appeared one after another, the rain kept off; Tom Turtle, 
the trainer, sat before me on the coach-box, with whom 
I exchanged civilities as a gentleman going to the fight; the 
passion that had transported me an hour before was subdued 
to pensive regret and conjectural musing on the next day's 
battle; I was promised a place inside at Reading, and upon 
the whole, I thought myself a lucky fellow. Such is the force 
of imagination ! On the outside of any other coach on the 
loth of December, with a Scotch mist drizzling through the 
cloudy moonlight air, I should have been cold, comfortless, 
impatient, and, no doubt, wet through; but seated on the 
Royal mail, I felt warm and comfortable, the air did me good, 
the ride did me good, I was pleased with the progress we had 
made, and confident that all would go well through the journey. 
When I got inside at Reading, I found Turtle and a stout 
valetudinarian, whose costume bespoke him one of the Fancy, 
and who had risen from a three months' sick bed to get into 
the mail to see the fight. They were intimate, and we fell 
into a lively discourse. My friend the trainer was confined 
in his topics to fighting dogs and men, to bears and badgers; 
beyond this he was 'quite chap-fallen,' had not a word to 
throw at a dog, or indeed very wisely fell asleep, when any 
other game was started. The whole art of training (I, however, 



The Fight 113 

learnt from him,) consists in two things, exercise and abstinence, 
abstinence and exercise, repeated alternately and without end. 
A yolk of an egg with a spoonful of rum in it is the first thing 
in a morning, and then a walk of six miles till breakfast. 
This meal consists of a plentiful supply of tea and toast and 
beef-steaks. Then another six or seven miles till dinner-time, 
and another supply of solid beef or mutton with a pint of 
porter, and perhaps, at the utmost, a couple of glasses of 
sherry. Martin trains on water, but this increases his infirmity 
on another very dangerous side. The Gas-man takes now 
and then a chirping glass (under the rose) to console him, 
during a six weeks' probation, for the absence of Mrs Hickman 
— an agreeable woman, with (I understand) a pretty fortune 
of two hundred pounds. How matter presses on me ! What 
stubborn things are facts ! How inexhaustible is nature and 
art! 'It is well,' as I once heard Mr Richmond observe, 
'to see a variety.' He was speaking of cock-fighting as an 
edifying spectacle. I cannot deny but that one learns more 
of what is (I do not say of what ought to be) in this desultory 
mode of practical study, than from reading the same book 
twice over, even though it should be a moral treatise. Where 
was I .? I was sitting at dinner with the candidate for the 
honours of the ring, 'where good digestion waits on appetite, 
and health on both.' Then follows an hour of social chat 
and native glee; and afterwards, to another breathing over 
heathy hill or dale. Back to supper, and then to bed, and 
up by six again — Our hero 

Follows so the ever-running sun 
With profitable ardour — 

to the day that brings him victory or defeat in the green 
fairy circle. Is not this life more sweet than mine ? I was 
going to say; but I will not libel any life by comparing it to 
mine, which is (at the date of these presents) bitter as colo- 
quintida and the dregs of aconitum ! 

The invalid in the Bath mail soared a pitch above the 
trainer, and did not sleep so sound, because he had 'more 
figures and more fantasies.' We talked the hours away merrily. 
He had faith in surgery, for he had had three ribs set right, 
that had been broken in a turn-up at Belcher's, but thought 

s. H. 8 



114 The Fight 

physicians old women, for they had no antidote in their 
catalogue for brandy. An indigestion is an excellent common- 
place for two people that never met before. By way of 
ingratiating myself, I told him the story of my doctor, who, 
on my earnestly representing to him that I thought his 
regimen had done me harm, assured me that the whole 
pharmacopeia contained nothing comparable to the prescrip- 
tion he had given me ; and, as a proof of its undoubted efficacy, 
said, that, 'he had had one gentleman with my complaint 
under his hands for the last fifteen years.' This anecdote 
made my companion shake the rough sides of his three great 
coats with boisterous laughter; and Turtle, starting out of 
his sleep, swore he knew how the fight would go, for he had 
had a dream about it. Sure enough the rascal told us how the 
three first rounds went off, but 'his dream,' Hke others, 'denoted 
a foregone conclusion.' He knew his men. The moon now 
rose in silver state, and I ventured, with some hesitation, 
to point out this object of placid beauty, with the blue serene 
beyond, to the man of science, to which his ear he 'seriously 
inclined,' the more as it gave promise d''un beau jour for the 
morrow, and showed the ring undrenched by envious showers, 
arrayed in sunny smiles. Just then, all going on well, I 
thought on my friend Toms, whom I had left behind, and said 
innocently, 'There was a blockhead of a fellow I left in town, 
who said there was no possibiHty of getting down by the mail, 
and talked of going by a caravan from Belcher's at two in 
the morning, after he had written some letters.' 'Why,' 
said he of the lapells, 'I should not wonder if that was the 
very person we saw running about like mad from one coach- 
door to another, and asking if any one had seen a friend of his, 
a gentleman going to the fight, whom he had missed stupidly 
enough by staying to write a note.' 'Pray, Sir,' said my 
fellow-traveller, 'had he a plaid-cloak on?' — 'Why, no,' 
said I, 'not at the time I left him, but he very well might 
afterwards, for he offered to lend me one.' The plaid-cloak 
and the letter decided the thing. Joe, sure enough, was in 
the Bristol mail, which preceded us by about fifty yards. 
This was drollfenough. We had now but a few miles to 
our place of destination, and the first thing I did on alighting 
at Newbury,", both coaches stopping at the same time, was 



The Fight 115 

to call out, 'Pray, is there a gentleman in that mail of the name 
of Toms?' 'No,' said Joe, borrowing something of the vein 
of Gilpin, 'for I have just got out.' 'Well!' says he, 'this 
is lucky; but you don't know how vexed I was to miss you; 
for,' added he, lowering his voice, 'do you know when I left 
you I went to Belcher's to ask about the caravan, and Mrs 
Belcher said very obHgingly, she couldn't tell about that, 
but there were two gentlemen who had taken places by the 
mail and were gone on in a landau, and she could frank us. 
It's a pity I didn't meet with you; we could then have got 
down for nothing. But muni's the word.'' It's the devil for 
any one to tell me a secret, for it's sure to come out in print. 
I do not care so much to gratify a friend, but the public ear 
is too great a temptation to m^e. 

Our present business was to get beds and a supper at an 
inn ; but this was no easy task. The public-houses were full, 
and where you saw a light at a private house, and people 
poking their heads out of the casement to see what was going 
on, they instantly put them in and shut the window, the 
moment you seemed advancing with a suspicious overture 
for accommodation. Our guard and coachman thundered 
away at the outer gate of the Crown for some time without 
effect — such was the greater noise within;— and when the 
doors were unbarred, and we got admittance, we found a 
party assembled in the kitchen round a good hospitable fire, 
some sleeping, others drinking, others talking on poHtics and 
on the fight. A tall English yeoman (something like Matthews 
in the face, and quite as great a wag) — 

A lusty man to ben an abbot able, — 

was making such a prodigious noise about rent and taxes, 
and the price of corn now and formerly, that he had prevented 
us from being heard at the gate. The first thing I heard him 
say was to a shuffling fellow who wanted to be off a bet for 
a shilHng glass of brandy and water^ — 'Confound it, man, 
don't be insipidV Thinks I, that is a good phrase. It was 
a good omen. He kept it up so all night, nor flinched with 
the approach of morning. He was a fine fellow, with sense, 
wit, and spirit, a hearty body and a joyous mind, free-spoken, 
frank, convivial — one of that true English breed that went 

8—2 



iiO The Fight 

with Harry the Fifth to the siege of Harfleur — 'standing like 
greyhounds in the sHps,' &c. We ordered tea and eggs (beds 
were soon found to be out of the question) and this fellow's 
conversation was sauce piquante. It did one's heart good to 
see him brandish his oaken towel and to hear him talk. He 
made mince-meat of a drunken, stupid, red-faced, quarrelsome, 
frowsy farmer, whose nose 'he moralized into a thousand 
similes,' making it out a firebrand like Bardolph's. 'I'll tell 
you what my friend,' says he, 'the landlady has only to keep 
you here to save fire and candle. If one was to touch your 
nose, it would go off like a piece of charcoal.' At this the 
other only grinned Hke an idiot, the sole variety in his purple 
face being his Httle peering grey eyes and yellow teeth; called 
for another glass, swore he would not stand it; and after 
many attempts to provoke his humourous antagonist to 
single combat, which the other turned off (after working him 
up to a ludicrous pitch of choler) with great adroitness, he 
fell quietly asleep with a glass of liquor in his hand, which 
he could not lift to his head. His laughing persecutor made 
a speech over him, and turning to the opposite side of the room, 
where they were all sleeping in the midst of this 'loud and 
furious fun,' said, 'There's a scene, by G — d, for Hogarth to 
paint. I think he and Shakspeare were our two best men at 
copying life.' This confirmed me in my good opinion of him. 
Hogarth, Shakspeare, and Nature, were just enough for him 
(indeed for any man) to know. I said, 'You read Cobbett, 
don't you? At least,' says I, 'you talk just as well as he 
writes.' He seemed to doubt this. But I said, 'We have an 
hour to spare: if you'll get pen, ink, and paper, and keep on 
talking, I'll write down what you say; and if it doesn't make 
a capital 'PoHtical Register,' I'll forfeit my head. You have 
kept me alive to-night, however. I don't know what I should 
have done without you.' He did not dislike this view of the 
thing, nor my asking if he was not about the size of Jem 
Belcher; and told me soon afterwards, in the confidence of 
friendship, that ' the circumstance which had given him nearly 
the greatest concern in his life, was Cribb's beating Jem after 
he had lost his eye by racket-playing.' — The morning dawns; 
that dim but yet clear light appears, which weighs like solid 
bars of metal on the sleepless eyelids; the guests drop down 



The Fight 117 

from their chambers one by one — but it was too late to think 
of going to bed now (the clock was on the stroke of seven), 
we had nothing for it but to find a barber's (the pole that 
glittered in the morning sun lighted us to his shop), and then 
a nine miles' march to Hungerford. The day was line, the 
sky was blue, the mists were retiring from the marshy ground, 
the path was tolerably dry, the sitting-up all night had not 
done us much harm — at least the cause was good ; we talked 
of this and that with amicable difference, roving and sipping 
of many subjects, but still invariably we returned to the fight. 
At length, a mile to the left of Hungerford, on a gentle eminence, 
we saw the ring surrounded by covered carts, gigs, and carriages, 
of which hundreds had passed us on the road ; Toms gave 
a youthful shout, and we hastened down a narrow lane to 
the scene of action. 

Reader, have you ever seen a fight ? If not, you have 
a pleasure to come, at least if it is a fight like that between 
the Gas-man and Bill Neate. The crowd was very great 
when we arrived on the spot; open carriages were coming 
up, with streamers flying and music playing, and the country- 
people were pouring in over hedge and ditch in all directions, 
to see their hero beat or be beaten. The odds were still on 
Gas, but only about five to four. Gully had been down to 
try Neate, and had backed him considerably, which was 
a damper to the sanguine confidence of the adverse party. 
About two hundred thousand pounds were pending. The Gas 
says, he has lost 3000/. which were promised him by different 
gentlemen if he had won. He had presumed too much on 
himself, which had made others presume on him. This spirited 
and formidable young fellow seems to have taken for his 
motto the old maxim, that 'there are three things necessary 
to success in life — Impudence ! Impudence ! Impudencef It 
is so in matters of opinion, but not in the Fancy, which is the 
most practical of all things, though even here confidence is 
half the battle, but only half. Our friend had vapoured and 
swaggered too much, as if he wanted to grin and bully his 
adversary out of the fight. 'Alas! the Bristol man was not 
so tamed!' — 'This is the grave-digger^ (would Tom Hickman 
exclaim in the moments of intoxication from gin and success, 
shewing his tremendous right hand), 'this will send many of 



ii8 The Fight 

them to their long homes; I haven't done with them yet!' 
Why should he — though he had licked four of the best men 
within the hour, yet why should he threaten to inflict dis- 
honourable chastisement on my old master Richmond, a 
veteran going off the stage, and who has borne his sable honours 
meekly? Magnanimity, my dear Tom, and bravery, should 
be inseparable. Or why should he go up to his antagonist, 
the first time he ever saw him at the Fives Court, and measuring 
him from head to foot with a glance of contempt, as Achilles 
surveyed Hector, say to him, 'What, are you Bill Neate? 
I'll knock more blood out of that great carcase of thine, this 
day fortnight, than you ever knock'd out of a bullock's ! ' 
It was not manly, 'twas not fighter-like. If he was sure of 
the victory (as he was not), the less said about it the better. 
Modesty should accompany the Fancy as its shadow. The 
best men were always the best behaved. Jem Belcher, the 
Game Chicken (before whom the Gas-man could not have 
lived), were civil, silent men. So is Cribb, so is Tom Belcher, 
the most elegant of sparrers, and not a man for every one 
to take by the nose. I enlarged on this topic in the mail 
(while Turtle was asleep), and said very wisely (as I thought) 
that impertinence was a part of no profession. A boxer was 
bound to beat his man, but not to thrust his fist, either actually 
or by implication, in every one's face. Even a highwayman, 
in the way of trade, may blow out your brains, but if he uses 
foul language at the same time, I should say he was no 
gentleman. A boxer, I would infer, need not be a blackguard 
or a coxcomb, more than another. Perhaps I press this point 
too much on a fallen man — Mr Thomas Hickman has by 
this time learnt that first of all lessons, 'That man was made 
to mourn.' He has lost nothing by the late fight but his 
presumption ; and that every man may do as well without ! 
By an over-display of this quality, however, the public had 
been prejudiced against him, and the knowing-ones were taken 
in. Few but those who had bet on him wished Gas to win. 
With my own prepossessions on the subject, the result of the 
nth of December appeared to me as fine a piece of poetical 
justice as I had ever witnessed. The difference of weight 
between the two combatants (14 stone to 12) was nothing to 
the sporting men. Great, heavy, clumsy, long-armed Bill 



The Fight 119 

Neate kicked the beam in the scale of the Gas-man's vanity. 
The amateurs were frightened at his big words, and thought 
that they would make up for the difference of six feet and 
five feet nine. Truly, the Fancy are not men of imagination. 
They judge of what has been, and cannot conceive of any thing 
that is to be. The Gas-man had won hitherto; therefore he 
must beat a man half as big again as himself — and that to 
a certainty. Besides, there are as many feuds, factions, 
prejudices, pedantic notions in the Fancy as in the state or 
in the schools. Mr Gully is almost the only cool, sensible 
man among them, who exercises an unbiassed discretion, and 
is not a slave to his passions in these matters. But enough 
of reflections, and to our tale. The day, as I have said, was 
fine for a December morning. The grass was wet, and the 
ground miry, and ploughed up with multitudinous feet, except 
that, within the ring itself, there was a spot of virgin-green 
closed in and unprofaned by vulgar tread, that shone with 
dazzling brightness in the mid-day sun. For it was now 
noon, and we had an hour to wait. This is the trying time. 
It is then the heart sickens, as you think what the two champions 
are about, and how short a time will determine their fate. 
After the first blow is struck, there is no opportunity for 
nervous apprehensions ; you are swallowed up in the immediate 
interest of the scene — but 

Between the acting of a dreadful thing 
And the first motion, all the interim is 
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream. 

I found it so as I felt the sun's rays clinging to my back, and 
saw the white wintry clouds sink below the verge of the 
horizon. 'So, I thought, my fairest hopes have faded from 
my sight ! — so will the Gas-man's glory, or that of his adversary, 
vanish in an hour.' The swells were parading in their white 
box-coats, the outer ring was cleared with some bruises on 
the heads and shins of the rustic assembly (for the cockneys 
had been distanced by the sixty-six miles) ; the time drew 
near, I had got a good stand; a bustle, a buzz, ran through 
the crowd, and from the opposite side entered Neate, between 
his second and bottle-holder. He rolled along, swathed in 
his loose great coat, his knock-knees bending under his huge 
bulk; and, with a modest cheerful air, threw his hat into the 



120 The Fight 

ring. He then just looked round, and began quietly to undress ; 
when from the other side there was a similar rush and an 
opening made, and the Gas-man came forward with a conscious 
air of anticipated triumph, too much like the cock-of-the walk. 
He strutted about more than became a hero, sucked oranges 
with a supercilious air, and threw away the skin with a toss 
of his head, and went up and looked at Neate, which was an 
act of supererogation. The only sensible thing he did was, 
as he strode away from the modern Ajax, to fling out his 
arms, as if he wanted to try whether they would do their 
work that day. By this time they had stripped, and presented 
a strong contrast in appearance. If Neate was Hke Ajax, 
'with Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear' the pugilistic reputation 
of all Bristol, Hickman might be compared to Diomed, light, 
vigorous, elastic, and his back glistened in the sun, as he moved 
about, like a panther's hide. There was now a dead pause — 
attention was awe-struck. Who at that moment, big with 
a great event, did not draw his breath short — did not feel 
his heart throb ? All was ready. They tossed up for the 
sun, and the Gas-man won. They were led up to the scratch — 
shook hands, and went at it. 

In the first round every one thought it was all over. After 
making play a short time, the Gas-man flew at his adversary 
like a tiger, struck five blows in as many seconds, three first, 
and then following him as he staggered back, two more, right 
and left, and down he fell, a mighty ruin. There was a shout, 
and I said, 'There is no standing this.' Neate seemed like 
a lifeless lump of flesh and bone, round which the Gas-man's 
blows played with the rapidity of electricity or lightning, and 
you imagined he would only be Hfted up to be knocked down 
again. It was as if Hickman held a sword or a fire in that 
right hand of his, and directed it against an unarmed body. 
They met again, and Neate seemed, not cowed, but particularly 
cautious. I saw his teeth clenched together and his brows 
knit close against the sun. He held out both his arms at full 
length straight before him, like two sledge-hammers, and raised 
his left an inch or two higher. The Gas-man could not get 
over this guard — they struck mutually and fell, but without 
advantage on either side. It was the same in the next round; 
but the balance of power was thus restored — the fate of the 



The Fight 121 

battle was suspended. No one could tell how it would end. 
This was the only moment in which opinion was divided; 
for, in the next, the Gas-man aiming a mortal blow at his 
adversary's neck, with his right hand, and failing from the 
length he had to reach, the other returned it with his left at 
full swing, planted a tremendous blow on his cheek-bone and 
eyebrow, and made a red ruin of that side of his face. The 
Gas-man went down, and there was another shout — a roar 
of triumph as the waves of fortune rolled tumultuously from 
side to side. This was a settler. Hickman got up, and 
'grinned horrible a ghastly smile,' yet he was evidently 
dashed in his opinion of himself; it was the first time he had 
ever been so punished; all one side of his face was perfect 
scarlet, and his right eye was closed in dingy blackness, as 
he advanced to the fight, less confident, but still determined. 
After one or two rounds, not receiving another such remem- 
brancer, he rallied and went at it with his former impetuosity. 
But in vain. His strength had been weakened, — his blows 
could not tell at such a distance,— he was obHged to fling 
himself at his adversary, and could not strike from his feet; 
and almost as regularly as he flew at him with his right hand, 
Neate warded the blow, or drew back out of its reach, and 
felled him with the return of his left. There was little cautious 
sparring — no half-hits — ho tapping and trifling, none of the 
petit-maitreship of the art — they were almost all knock-down 
blows: — the fight was a good stand-up fight. The wonder 
was the half-minute time. If there had been a minute or 
more allowed between each round, it would have been 
intelligible how they should by degrees recover strength and 
resolution; but to see two men smashed to the ground, 
smeared with gore, stunned, senseless, the breath beaten out 
of their bodies ; and then, before you recover from the shock, 
to see them rise up with new strength and courage, stand 
steady to inflict or receive mortal offence, and rush upon each 
other 'like two clouds over the Caspian' — this is the most 
astonishing thing of all: — this is the high and heroic state 
of man ! From this time forward the event became more 
certain every round; and about the twelfth it seemed as if 
it must have been over. Hickman generally stood with his 
back to me; but in the scuffle, he had changed positions, and 



122 The Fight 

Neate just then made a tremendous lunge at him, and hit 
him full in the face. It was doubtful whether he would fall 
backwards or forwards; he hung suspended for a second or 
two, and then fell back, throwing his hands in the air, and 
with his face lifted up to the sky. I never saw any thing 
more terrific than his aspect just before he fell. All traces 
of life, of natural expression, were gone from him. His face 
was like a human skull, a death's head, spouting blood. The 
eyes were filled with blood, the nose streamed with blood, 
the mouth gaped blood. He was not like an actual man, 
but like a preternatural, spectral appearance, or like one of 
the figures in Dante's Inferno. Yet he fought on after this 
for several rounds, still striking the first desperate blow, and 
Neate standing on the defensive, and using the same cautious 
guard to the last, as if he had still all his work to do ; and it 
was not till the Gas-man was so stunned in the seventeenth 
or eighteenth round, that his senses forsook him, and he could 
not come to time, that the battle was declared over^. Ye who 
despise the Fancy, do something to shew as much pluck, or 
as much self-possession as this, before you assume a superiority 
which you have never given a single proof of by any one 
action in the whole course of your lives ! — When the Gas-man 
came to himself, the first words he uttered were, 'Where am I ? 
What is the matter?' 'Nothing is the matter, Tom, — you 
have lost the battle, but you are the bravest man alive.' 
And Jackson whispered to him, 'I am collecting a purse for 
you, Tom.'— Vain sounds, and unheard at that moment ! 
Neate instantly went up and shook him cordially by the hand, 
and seeing some old acquaintance, began to flourish with his 
fists, calling out, 'Ah you always said I couldn't fight — What 
do you think now ? ' But all in good humour, and without 
any appearance of arrogance; only it was evident Bill Neate 
was pleased that he had won the fight. When it was over, 
I asked Cribb if he did not think it was a good one ? He said, 

^ Scroggins said of the Gas-man, that he thought he was a man of that 
courage, that if his hands were cut off, he would still fight on with the 
stumps — like that of Widrington, — 

In doleful dumps, 

Who, when his legs were smitten off, 
Still fought upon his stumps. 



The Fight 123 

' Pretty well ! ' The carrier-pigeons now mounted into the air, 
and one of them flew with the news of her husband's victory 
to the bosom of Mrs Neate. Alas, for Mrs Hickman! 

Mais au revoir^ as Sir FopHng Flutter says. I went down 
with Toms ; I returned with Jack Pigott, whom I met on the 
ground. Toms is a rattle brain; Pigott is a sentimentalist. 
Now, under favour, I am a sentimentalist too— therefore I say 
nothing, but that the interest of the excursion did not flag 
as I came back. Pigott and I marched along the causeway 
leading from Hungerford to Newbury, now observing the 
effect of a brilHant sun on the tawny meads or moss-coloured 
cottages, now exulting in the fight, now digressing to some 
topic of general and elegant literature. My friend was dressed 
in character for the occasion, or like one of the Fancy; that 
is, with a double portion of great coats, clogs, and overhauls : 
and just as we had agreed with a couple of country-lads to 
carry his superfluous wearing-apparel to the next town, we 
were overtaken by a return post-chaise, into which I got, 
Pigott preferring a seat on the bar. There were two strangers 
already in the chaise, and on their observing they supposed 
I had been to the fight, I said I had, and concluded they had 
done the same. They appeared, however, a little shy and sore 
on the subject; and it was not till after several hints dropped, 
and questions put, that it turned out that they had missed it. 
One of these friends had undertaken to drive the other there 
in his gig : they had set out, to make sure work, the day before 
at three in the afternoon. The owner of the one-horse vehicle 
scorned to ask his way, and drove right on to Bagshot, instead 
of turning off at Hounslow: there they stopped all night, 
and set off the next day across the country to Reading, from 
whence they took coach, and got down within a mile or two 
of Hungerford, just half an hour after the fight was over. 
This might be safely set down as one of the miseries of human 
life. We parted with these two gentlemen who had been to 
see the fight, but had returned as they went, at Wolhampton, 
where we were promised beds (an irresistible temptation, 
for Pigott had passed the preceding night at Hungerford as 
we had done at Newbury), and we turned into an old bow- 
windowed parlour with a carpet and a snug fire; and after 
devouring a quantity of tea, toast, and eggs, sat down to 



124 The Fight 

consider, during an hour of philosophic leisure, what we 
should have for supper. In the midst of an Epicurean 
deliberation between a roasted fowl and mutton chops with 
mashed potatoes, we were interrupted by an inroad of Goths 
and Vandals — procul este profani— not real flash-men, but 
interlopers, noisy pretenders, butchers from Tothill-fields, 
brokers from Whitechapel, who called immediately for pipes 
and tobacco, hoping it would not be disagreeable to the 
gentlemen, and began to insist that it was a cross. Pigott 
withdrew from the smoke and noise into another room, and 
left me to dispute the point with them for a couple of hours 
sans intermission by the dial. The next morning we rose 
refreshed; and on observing that Jack had a pocket volume 
in his hand, in which he read in the intervals of our discourse, 
I inquired what it was, and learned to my particular satis- 
faction that it was a volume of the New Eloise. Ladies, 
after this, will you contend that a love for the Fancy is 
incompatible with the cultivation of sentiment ? — We jogged 
on as before, my friend setting me up in a genteel drab great 
coat and green silk handkerchief (which I must say became 
me exceedingly), and after stretching our legs for a few miles, 
and seeing Jack Randall, Ned Turner, and Scroggins, pass 
on the top of one of the Bath coaches, we engaged with the 
driver of the second to take us to London for the usual fee. 
I got inside, and found three other passengers. One of them 
was an old gentleman with an aquihne nose, powdered hair, 
and a pigtail, and who looked as if he had played many a 
rubber at the Bath rooms. I said to myself, he is very like 
Mr Windham ; I wish he would enter into conversation, that 
I might hear what fine observations would come from those 
finely-turned features. However, nothing passed, till, stopping 
to dine at Reading, some inquiry was made by the company 
about the fight, and I gave (as the reader may beheve) an 
eloquent and animated description of it. When we got into 
the coach again, the old gentleman, after a graceful exordium, 
said, he had, when a boy, been to a fight between the famous 
Broughton and George Stevenson, who was called the Fighting 
Coachman, in the year 1770, with the late Mr Windham. 
This beginning flattered the spirit of prophecy within me 
and rivetted my attention. He went on — 'George Stevenson 



The Fight 125 

was coachman to a friend of my father's. He was an old 
man when I saw him some years afterwards. He took hold 
of his own arm and said, "there was muscle here once, but 
now it is no more than this young gentleman's." He added, 
"well, no matter; I have been here long, I am willing to go 
hence, and I hope I have done no more harm than another 
man." Once,' said my unknown companion, 'I asked him if 
he had ever beat Broughton ? He said Yes ; that he had 
fought with him three times, and the last time he fairly beat 
him, though the world did not allow it. "I'll tell you how it 
was, master. When the seconds lifted us up in the last round, 
we were so exhausted that neither of us could stand, and we 
fell upon one another, and as Master Broughton fell uppermost, 
the mob gave it in his favour, and he was said to have won 
the battle. But," says he, "the fact was, that as his second 
(John Cuthbert) lifted him up, he said to him, 'I'll fight no 
more, I've had enough'; "which," says Stevenson, "you 
know gave me the victory. And to prove to you that this 
was the case, when John Cuthbert was on his death-bed, and 
they asked him if there was any thing on his mind which he 
wished to confess, he answered, 'Yes, that there was one thing 
he wished to set right, for that certainly Master Stevenson 
won that last fight with Master Broughton; for he whispered 
him as he lifted him up in the last round of all, that he had had 
enough."" 'This,' said the Bath gentleman, 'was a bit of 
human nature'; and I have written this account of the fight 
on purpose that it might not be lost to the world. He also 
stated as a proof of the candour of mind in this class of men, 
that Stevenson acknowledged that Broughton could have 
beat him in his best day; but that he (Broughton) was getting 
old in their last rencounter. When we stopped in Piccadilly, 
I wanted to ask the gentleman some questions about the late 
Mr Windham, but had not courage. I got out, resigned my 
coat and green silk handkerchief to Pigott (loth to part 
with these ornaments of life), and walked home in high spirits. 
P.S. Toms called upon me the next day, to ask me if 
I did not think the fight was a complete thing? I said I 
thought it was. I hope he will relish my account of it. 



THE INDIAN JUGGLERS 

Coming forward and seating himself on the ground in his 
white dress and tightened turban, the chief of the Indian 
Jugglers begins with tossing up two brass balls, which is 
what any of us could do, and concludes with keeping up 
four at the same time, which is what none of us could do to 
save our lives, nor if we were to take our whole lives to do 
it in. Is it then a trifling power we see at work, or is it not 
something next to miraculous ? It is the utmost stretch of 
human ingenuity, which nothing but the bending the faculties 
of body and mind to it from the tenderest infancy with incessant, 
ever-anxious application up to manhood, can accompHsh or 
make even a sHght approach to. Man, thou art a wonderful 
animal, and thy ways past finding out ! Thou canst do strange 
things, but thou turnest them to little account !■ — -To conceive 
of this effort of extraordinary dexterity distracts the imagina- 
tion and makes admiration breathless. Yet it costs nothing 
to the performer, any more than if it were a mere mechanical 
deception with which he had nothing to do but to watch 
and laugh at the astonishment of the spectators. A single 
error of a hair's-breadth, of the smallest conceivable portion 
of time, would be fatal: the precision of the movements 
must be like a mathematical truth, their rapidity is like 
lightning. To catch four balls in succession in less than 
a second of time, and deliver them back so as to return with 
seeming consciousness to the hand again, to make them 
revolve round him at certain intervals, like the planets in 
their spheres, to make them chase one another like sparkles 
of fire, or shoot up like flowers or meteors, to throw them behind 
his back and twine them round his neck like ribbons or like 
serpents, to do what appears an impossibility, and to do it 
with all the ease, the grace, the carelessness imaginable, to 
laugh at, to play with the glittering mockeries, to follow them 



The Indian Jugglers 127 

with his eye as if he could fascinate them with its lambent 
fire, or as if he had only to see that they kept time with the 
music on the stage — there is something in all this which he 
who does not admire may be quite sure he never really 
admired any thing in the whole course of his life. It is skill 
surmounting difficulty, and beauty triumphing over skill. 
It seems as if the difficulty once mastered naturally resolved 
itself into ease and grace, and as if to be overcome at all, it 
must be overcome without an effort. The smallest awkward- 
ness or want of pHancy or self-possession would stop the whole 
process. It is the work of witchcraft, and yet sport for 
children. Some of the other feats are quite as curious and 
wonderful, such as the balancing the artificial tree and shooting 
a bird from each branch through a quill ; though none of them 
have the elegance or facility of the keeping up of the brass 
balls. You are in pain for the result, and glad when the 
experiment is over; they are not accompanied with the 
same unmixed, unchecked delight as the former; and I would 
not give much to be merely astonished without being pleased 
at the same time. As to the swallowing of the sword, the 
police ought to interfere to prevent it. When I saw the 
Indian Juggler do the same things before, his feet were bare, 
and he had large rings on the toes, which kept turning round 
all the time of the performance, as if they moved of themselves. 
— The hearing a speech in Parliament, drawled or stammered 
out by the Honourable Member or the Noble Lord, the ringing 
the changes on their common-places, which any one could 
repeat after them as well as they, stirs me not a jot, shakes 
not my good opinion of myself: but the seeing the Indian 
Jugglers does. It makes me ashamed of myself. I ask what 
there is that I can do as well as this ? Nothing. What have 
I been doing all my life ? Have I been idle, or have I nothing 
to shew for all my labour and pains ? Or have I passed my 
time in pouring words Hke water into empty sieves, rolling 
a stone up a hill and then down again, trying to prove an 
argument in the teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the 
dark, and not finding them ? Is there no one thing in which 
I can challenge competition, that I can bring as an instance 
of exact perfection, in which others cannot find a flaw ? The 
utmost I can pretend to is to write a description of what 



128 The Indian Jugglers 

this fellow can do. I can write a book: so can many others 
who have not even learned to spell. What abortions are 
these Essays! What errors, what ill-pieced transitions, what 
crooked reasons, what lame conclusions! How little is made 
out, and that little how ill ! Yet they are the best I can do. 
I endeavour to recollect all I have ever observed or thought 
upon a subject, and to express it as nearly as I can. Instead 
of writing on four subjects at a time, it is as much as I can 
manage to keep the thread of one discourse clear and un- 
entangled. I have also time on my hands to correct my 
opinions, and polish my periods: but the one I cannot, and 
the other I will not do. I am fond of arguing: yet with a 
good deal of pains and practice it is often as much as I can 
do to beat my man; though he may be a very indifferent 
hand. A common fencer would disarm his adversary in the 
twinkhng of an eye, unless he were a professor Hke himself. 
A stroke of wit will sometimes produce this effect, but there 
is no such power or superiority in sense or reasoning. There 
is no complete mastery of execution to be shewn there : and 
you hardly know the professor from the impudent pretender 
or the mere clowni. 

I have always had this feeUng of the inefficacy and slow 
progress of intellectual compared to mechanical excellence, 
and it has always made me somewhat dissatisfied. It is a 
great many years since I saw Richer, the famous rope-dancer, 
perform at Sadler's Wells. He was matchless in his art, and 
added to his extraordinary skill exquisite ease, and unaffected 
natural grace. I was at that time employed in copying a 
half-length picture of Sir Joshua Reynolds's; and it put me 
out of conceit with it. How ill this part was made out in 

1 The celebrated Peter Pindar (Dr Wolcot) first discovered and brought 
out the talents of the late Mr Opie, the painter. He was a poor Cornish 
boy, and was out at work in the fields, when the poet went in search of 
him. 'Well, my lad, can you go and bring me your very best picture.?' 
The other flew like lightning, and soon came back with what he considered 
as his master-piece. The stranger looked at it, and the young artist, after 
waiting for some time without his giving any opinion, at length exclaimed 
eagerly, 'Well, what do you think of it?' — 'Think of it?' said Wolcot, 
'why I think you ought to be ashamed of it — that you who might do so 
well, do no better!' The same answer would have applied to this artist's 
latest performances, that had been suggested by one of his earliest efforts. 



The Indian Jugglers 129 

the drawing! How heavy, how slovenly this other was 
painted! I could not help saying to myself, 'If the rope- 
dancer had performed his task in this manner, leaving so many 
gaps and botches in his work, he would have broke his neck 
long ago; I should never have seen that vigorous elasticity 
of nerve and precision of movement ! ' — Is it then so easy an 
undertaking (comparatively) to dance on a tight-rope? Let 
any one, who thinks so, get up and try. There is the thing. 
It is that which at first we cannot do at all, which in the end 
is done to such perfection. To account for this in some degree, 
I might observe that mechanical dexterity is confined to doing 
some one particular thing, which you can repeat as often as 
you please, in which you know whether you succeed or fail, 
and where the point of perfection consists in succeeding in 
a given undertaking. — In mechanical efforts, you improve 
by perpetual practice, and you do so infallibly, because the 
object to be attained is not a matter of taste or fancy or 
opinion, but of actual experiment, in which you must either 
do the thing or not do it. If a man is put to aim at a mark 
with a bow and arrow, he must hit it or miss it, that's certain. 
He cannot deceive himself, and go on shooting wide or falling 
short, and still fancy that he is making progress. The distinc- 
tion between right and wrong, between true and false, is here 
palpable; and he must either correct his aim or persevere 
in his error with his eyes open, for which there is neither 
excuse nor temptation. If a man is learning to dance on a 
rope, if he does not mind what he is about, he will break his 
neck. After that, it will be in vain for him to argue that he 
did not make a false step. His situation is not like that 
of Goldsmith's pedagogue. — 

In argument they own'd his wondrous skill, 
And e'en though vanquish'd, he could argue still. 

Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are 
disgrace, defeat, exposure to immediate scorn and laughter. 
There is no opportunity in such ca^ for self-delusion, no idling 
time away, no being off your guard (or you must take the 
consequences) — neither is there any room for humour or caprice 
or prejudice. If the Indian Juggler were to play tricks in 
throwing up the three case-knives, which keep their positions 
likes the leaves of a crocus in the air, he would cut his fingers. 



130 The Indian Jugglers 

I can make a very bad antithesis without cutting my fingers. 
The tact of style is more ambiguous than that of double-edged 
instruments. If the Juggler were told that by flinging himself 
under the wheels of the Jaggernaut, when the idol issues forth 
on a gaudy day, he would immediately be transported into 
Paradise, he might believe it, and nobody could disprove it. 
So the Brahmins may say what they please on that subject, 
may build up dogmas and mysteries without end, and not 
be detected : but their ingenious countryman cannot persuade 
the frequenters of the Olympic Theatre that he performs 
a number of astonishing feats without actually giving proofs 
of what he says. — There is then in this sort of manual dexterity, 
first a gradual aptitude acquired to a given exertion of muscular 
power, from constant repetition, and in the next place, an 
exact knowledge how much is still wanting and necessary 
to be supplied. The obvious test is to increase the effort 
or nicety of the operation, and still to find it come true. The 
muscles ply instinctively to the dictates of habit. Certain 
movements and impressions of the hand and eye, having 
been repeated together an infinite number of times, are 
unconsciously but unavoidably cemented into closer and 
closer union; the hmbs require little more than to be put 
in motion for them to follow a regular track with ease and 
certainty; so that the mere intention of the will acts mathe- 
matically, like touching the spring of a machine, and you 
come with Locksley in Ivanhoe, in shooting at a mark, 'to 
allow for the wind.' 

Farther, what is meant by perfection in mechanical 
exercises is the performing certain feats to a uniform nicety, 
that is, in fact, undertaking no more than you can perform. 
You task yourself, the limit you fix is optional, and no more 
than human industry and skill can attain to: but you have 
no abstract, independent standard of difficulty or excellence 
(other than the extent of your own powers). Thus he who can 
keep up four brass balls does this to perfection ; but he cannot 
keep up five at the same instant, and would fail every time 
he attempted it. That is, the mechanical performer undertakes 
to emulate himself, not to equal another^. But the artist 

^ If two persons play against each other at any game, one of them 
necessarily fails. 



The Indian Jugglers 131 

undertakes to imitate another, or to do what nature has done, 
and this it appears is more difficult, viz. to copy what she has 
set before us in the face of nature or 'human face divine,' 
entire and without a blemish, than to keep up four brass 
balls at the same instant; for the one is done by the power 
of human skill and industry, and the other never was nor will 
be. Upon the whole, therefore, I have more respect for 
Reynolds, than I have for Richer; for, happen how it will, 
there have been more people in the world who could dance 
on a rope like the one than who could paint like Sir Joshua 
The latter was but a bungler in his profession to the other, 
it is true; but then he had a harder task-master to obey, 
whose will was more wayward and obscure, and whose instruc- 
tions it was more difficult to practise. You can put a child 
apprentice to a tumbler or rope-dancer with a comfortable 
prospect of success, if they are but sound of wind and limb : 
but you cannot do the same thing in painting. The odds 

are a milHon to one. You may make indeed as many H s 

and H s, as you put into that sort of machine, but not one 

Reynolds amongst them all, with his grace, his grandeur, his 
blandness oi gusto, 'in tones and gestures hit,' unless you could 
make the man over again. To snatch this grace beyond the 
reach of art is then the height of art — where fine art begins, 
and where mechanical skill ends. The soft suffusion of the 
soul, the speechless breathing eloquence, the looks 'commercing 
with the skies,' the ever-shifting forms of an eternal principle, 
that which is seen but for a moment, but dwells in the heart 
always, and is only seized as it passes by strong and secret 
sympathy, must be taught by nature and genius, not by rules 
or study. It is suggested by feeling, not by laborious micro- 
scopic inspection: in seeking for it without, we lose the 
harmonious clue to it within: and in aiming to grasp the 
substance, we let the very spirit of art evaporate. In a word, 
the objects of fine art are not the objects of sight but as these 
last are the objects of taste and imagination, that is, as they 
appeal to the sense of beauty, of pleasure, and of power in 
the human breast, and are explained by that finer sense, and 
revealed in their inner structure to the eye in return. Nature 
is also a language. Objects, like words, have a meaning; 
and the true artist is the interpreter of this language, which 

9—2 



132 The Indian Jugglers 

he can only do by knowing its application to a thousand other 
objects in a thousand other situations. Thus the eye is too 
blind a guide of itself to distinguish between the warm or cold 
tone of a deep blue sky, but another sense acts as a monitor 
to it, and does not err. The colour of the leaves in autumn 
would be nothing without the feeling that accompanies it; 
but it is that feeling that stamps them on the canvas, faded, 
seared, blighted, shrinking from the winter's flaw, and makes 
the sight as true as touch — 

And visions, as poetic eyes avow, 

Cling to each leaf and hang on every bough. 

The more ethereal, evanescent, more refined and subHme part 
of art is the seeing nature through the medium of sentiment 
and passion, as each object is a symbol of the affections and 
a link in the chain of our endless being. But the unravelling 
this mysterious web of thought and feeling is alone in the 
Muse's gift, namely, in the power of that trembling sensibility 
which is awake to every change and every modification of 
its ever-varying impressions, that 

Thrills in each nerve, and lives along the line. 

This power is indifferently called genius, imagination, 
feeling, taste ; but the manner in which it acts upon the mind 
can neither be defined by abstract rules, as is the case in science, 
nor verified by continual unvarying experiments, as is the case 
in mechanical performances. The mechanical excellence of 
the Dutch painters in colouring and handling is that which 
comes the nearest in fine art to the perfection of certain manual 
exhibitions of skill. The truth of the effect and the facility 
with which it is produced are equally admirable. Up to a 
certain point, every thing is faultless. The hand and eye 
have done their part. There is only a want of taste and 
genius. It is after we enter upon that enchanted ground that 
the human mind begins to droop and flag as in a strange road, 
or in a thick mist, benighted and making Httle way with many 
attempts and many failures, and that the best of us only 
escape with half a triumph. The undefined and the imaginary 
are the regions that we must pass like Satan, difiicult and 
doubtful, 'half flying, half on foot.' The object in sense is 
a positive thing, and execution comes with practice. 



The Indian Jugglers 133 

Cleverness is a certain knack or aptitude at doing certain 
things, which depend more on a particular adroitness and 
off-hand readiness than on force or perseverance, such as 
making puns, making epigrams, making extempore verses, 
mimicking the company, mimicking a style, &c. Cleverness 
is either liveliness and smartness, or something answering to 
sleight of hand, like letting a glass fall sideways off a table, 
or else a trick, Hke knowing the secret spring of a watch. 
Accomplishments are certain external graces, which are to 
be learnt from others, and which are easily displayed to the 
admiration of the beholder, viz. dancing, riding, fencing, 
music, and so on. These ornamental acquirements are only 
proper to those who are at ease in mind and fortune. I know 
an individual who if he had been born to an estate of five 
thousand a year, would have been the most accomphshed 
gentleman of the age. He would have been the dehght and 
envy of the circle in which he moved — would have graced by 
his manners the Hberality flowing from the openness of his 
heart, would have laughed with the women, have argued with 
the men, have said good things and written agreeable ones, have 
taken a hand at piquet or the lead at the harpsichord, and have 
set and sung his own verses — nuga canoree — with tenderness 
and spirit; a Rochester without the vice, a modern Surrey! 
As it is, all these capabilities of excellence stand in his way. 
He is too versatile for a professional man, not dull enough 
for a political drudge, too gay to be happy, too thoughtless 
to be rich. He wants the enthusiasm of the poet, the severity 
of the prose-writer, and the application of the man of business. 
— Talent is the capacity of doing any thing that depends on 
application and industry, such as writing a criticism, making 
a speech, studying the law. Talent differs from genius, as 
voluntary differs from involuntary power. Ingenuity is genius 
in trifles, greatness is genius in undertakings of much pith 
and moment. A clever or ingenious man is one who can do 
any thing well, whether it is worth doing or not: a great 
man is one who can do that which when done is of the highest 
importance. Themistocles said he could not play on the 
flute, but that he could make of a small city a great one. 
This gives one a pretty good idea of the distinction in question. 

Greatness is great power, producing great effects. It is 



134 The Indian Jugglers 

not enough that a man has great power in himself, he must 
shew it to all the world, in a way that cannot be hid or gainsaid. 
He must fill up a certain idea in the public mind. I have no 
other notion of greatness than this two-fold definition, great 
results springing from great inherent energy. The great in 
visible objects has relation to that which extends over space: 
the great in mental ones has to do with space and time. No 
man is truly great, who is great only in his life-time. The 
test of greatness is the page of history. Nothing can be said 
to be great that has a distinct limit, or that borders on something 
evidently greater than itself. Besides, what is short-lived and 
pampered into mere notoriety, is of a gross and vulgar quality 
in itself. A Lord Mayor is hardly a great man. A city orator 
or patriot of the day only shew, by reaching the height of their 
wishes, the distance they are at from any true ambition. 
Popularity is neither fame nor greatness. A king (as such) 
is not a great man. He has great power, but it is not his own. 
He merely wields the lever of the state, which a child, an 
idiot, or a madman can do. It is the office, not the man we 
gaze at. Any one else in the same situation would be just 
as much an object of abject curiosity. We laugh at the country 
girl who having seen a king expressed her disappointment 
by saying, 'Why, he is only a man!' Yet, knowing this, we 
run to see a king as if he was something more than a man. — 
To display the greatest powers, unless they are applied to 
great purposes, makes nothing for the character of greatness. 
To throw a barley-corn through the eye of a needle, to 
multiply nine figures by nine in the memory, argues infinite 
dexterity of body and capacity of mind, but nothing comes 
of either. There is a surprising power at work, but the effects 
are not proportionate, or such as take hold of the imagination. 
To impress the idea of power on others, they must be made 
in some way to feel it. It must be communicated to their 
understandings in the shape of an increase of knowledge, or 
it must subdue and overawe them by subjecting their wills. 
Admiration, to be solid and lasting, must be founded on 
proofs from which we have no means of escaping; it is neither 
a slight nor a voluntary gift. A mathematician who solves 
a profound problem, a poet who creates an image of beauty 
in the mind that was not there before, imparts knowledge 



The Indian Jugglers 135 

and power to others, in which his greatness and his fame 
consists, and on which it reposes. Jedediah Buxton will be 
forgotten; but Napier's bones will live. Lawgivers, philo- 
sophers, founders of religion, conquerors and heroes, inventors 
and great geniuses in arts and sciences, are great men; for 
they are great pubHc benefactors, or formidable scourges to 
mankind. Among ourselves, Shakespear, Newton, Bacon, 
Milton, Cromwell, were great men; for they shewed great 
power by acts and thoughts, which have not yet been consigned 
to oblivion. They must needs be men of lofty stature, whose 
shadows lengthen out to remote posterity. A great farce- 
writer may be a great man ; for Moliere was but a great 
farce-writer. In my mind, the author of Don Quixote was 
a great man. So have there been many others. A great 
chess-player is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he 
found it. No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness. 
This will apply to all displays of power or trials of skill, which 
are confined to the momentary, individual effort, and construct 
no permanent image or trophy of themselves without them. 
Is not an actor then a great man, because 'he dies and leaves 
the world no copy'? I must make an exception for Mrs 
Siddons, or else give up my definition of greatness for her 
sake. A man at the top of his profession is not therefore 
a great man. He is great in his way, but that is all, unless 
he shews the marks of a great moving intellect, so that we 
trace the master-mind, and can sympathise with the springs 
that urge him on. The rest is but a craft or mystery. John 
Hunter was a great man — that any one might see without the 
smallest skill in surgery. His style and manner shewed the 
man. He would set about cutting up the carcase of a whale 
with the same greatness of gusto that Michael Angelo would 
have hewn a block of marble. Lord Nelson was a great 
naval commander; but for myself, I have not much opinion 
of a sea-faring Hfe. Sir Humphry Davy is a great chemist, 
but I am not sure that he is a great man. I am not a bit 
the wiser for any of his discoveries, nor I never met with any 
one that was. But it is in the nature of greatness to propagate 
an idea of itself, as wave impels wave, circle without circle. 
It is a contradiction in terms for a coxcomb to be a great man. 
A really great man has always an idea of something greater 



136 The Indian Jugglers 

than himself. I have observed that certain sectaries and 
polemical writers have no higher compliment to pay their 
most shining lights than to say that 'Such a one was a con- 
siderable man in his day.' Some new elucidation of a text 
sets aside the authority of the old interpretation, and a 'great 
scholar's memory outlives him half a century,' at the utmost. 
A rich man is not a great man, except to his dependants and 
his steward. A lord is a great man in the idea we have of 
his ancestry, and probably of himself, if we know nothing 
of him but his title. I have heard a story of two bishops, one 
of whom said (speaking of St Peter's at Rome) that when he 
first entered it, he was rather awe-struck, but that as he 
walked up it, his mind seemed to swell and dilate with it, 
and at last to fill the whole building — the other said that as 
he saw more of it, he appeared to himself to grow less and 
less every step he took, and in the end to dwindle into nothing. 
This was in some respects a striking picture of a great and 
little mind — for greatness sympathises with greatness, and 
littleness shrinks into itself. The one might have become 
a Wolsey; the other was only fit to become a Mendicant 
Friar — or there might have been court-reasons for making 
him a bishop. The French have to me a character of littleness 
in all about them ; but they have produced three great men 
that belong to every country, Mohere, Rabelais, and Montaigne. 

To return from this digression, and conclude the Essay. 
A singular instance of manual dexterity was shewn in the 
person of the late John Cavanagh, whom I have several times 
seen. His death was celebrated at the time in an article in 
the Examiner newspaper (Feb. 7, 18 19), written apparently 
between jest and earnest: but as it is fat to our purpose, and 
falls in with my own way of considering such subjects, I shall 
here take leave to quote it. 

*Died at his house in Burbage-street, St Giles's, John 
Cavanagh, the famous hand fives-player. When a person 
dies, who does any one thing better than any one else in the 
world, which so many others are trying to do well, it leaves 
a gap in society. It is not likely that any one will now see 
the game of fives played in its perfection for many years to 
come — for Cavanagh is dead, and has not left his peer behind 
him. It may be said that there are things of more importance 



The Indian Jugglers 137 

than striking a ball against a wall — there are things indeed 
which make more noise and do as little good, such as making 
war and peace, making speeches and answering them, making 
verses and blotting them; making money and throwing it 
away. But the game of fives is what no one despises who has 
ever played at it. It is the finest exercise for the body, and 
the best relaxation for the mind. The Roman poet said that 
"Care mounted behind the horseman and stuck to his skirts." 
But this remark would not have applied to the fives-player. 
He who takes to playing at fives is twice young. He feels 
neither the past nor future " in the instant." Debts, 
taxes, "domestic treason, foreign levy, nothing can touch 
him further." He has no other wish, no other thought, 
from the moment the game begins, but that of striking the ball, 
of placing it, of making it! This Cavanagh was sure to do. 
Whenever he touched the ball, there was an end of the chase. 
His eye was certain, his hand fatal, his presence of mind 
complete. He could do what he pleased, and he always 
knew exactly what to do. He saw the whole game, and played 
it; took instant advantage of his adversary's weakness, and 
recovered balls, as if by a miracle and from sudden thought, 
that every one gave for lost. He had equal power and skill, 
quickness, and judgment. He could either out-wit his an- 
tagonist by finesse, or beat him by main strength. Sometimes, 
when he seemed preparing to send the ball with the full 
swing of his arm, he would by a slight turn of his wrist drop 
it within an inch of the line. In general, the ball came from 
his hand, as if from a racket, in a straight horizontal line; 
so that it was in vain to attempt to overtake or stop it. As it 
was said of a great orator that he never was at a loss for a 
word, and for the properest word, so Cavanagh always could 
tell the degree of force necessary to be given to a ball, and 
the precise direction in which it should be sent. He did his 
work with the greatest ease ; never took more pains than was 
necessary ; and while others were fagging themselves to death, 
was as cool and collected as if he had just entered the court. 
His style of play was as remarkable as his power of execution. 
He had no affectation, no trifling. He did not throw away 
the game to show off an attitude, or try an experiment. He 
was a fine, sensible, manly player, who did what he could, 



138 The Indian Jugglers 

but that was more than any one else could even affect to do. 
His blows were not undecided and ineffectual — lumbering 
like Mr Wordsworth's epic poetry, nor wavering like Mr 
Coleridge's lyric prose, nor short of the mark like Mr 
Brougham's speeches, nor wide of it like Mr Canning's wit, 
nor foul like the Quarterly, nor let balls like the Edinburgh 
Review. Cobbett and Junius together would have made 
a Cavanagh. He was the best up-hill player in the world; 
even when his adversary was fourteen, he would play on the 
same or better, and as he never flung away the game through 
carelessness and conceit, he never gave it up through laziness 
or want of heart. The only peculiarity of his play was that 
he never volleyed, but let the balls hop ; but if they rose an 
inch from the ground, he never missed having them. There 
was not only nobody equal, but nobody second to him. It is 
supposed that he could give any other player half the game, 
or beat him with his left hand. His service was tremendous. 
He once played Woodward and Meredith together (two of 
the best players in England) in the Fives-court, St Martin's- 
street, and made seven and twenty aces following by services 
alone — a thing unheard of. He another time played Peru, 
who was considered a first-rate fives-player, a match of the 
best out of five games, and in the three first games, which of 
course decided the match, Peru got only one ace. Cavanagh 
was an Irishman by birth, and a house-painter by profession. 
He had once laid aside his working-dress, and walked up, in 
his smartest clothes, to the Rosemary Branch to have an 
afternoon's pleasure. A person accosted him, and asked him 
if he would have a game. So they agreed to play for half-a- 
crown a game, and a bottle of cider. The first game begun — it 
was seven, eight, ten, thirteen, fourteen, all. Cavanagh won it. 
The next was the same. They played on, and each game was 
hardly contested. "There," said the unconscious fives-player, 
"there was a stroke that Cavanagh could not take: I never 
played better in my life, and yet I can't win a game. I don't 
know how it is." However, they played on, Cavanagh winning 
every game, and the by-standers drinking the cider, and 
laughing all the time. In the twelfth game, when Cavanagh 
was only four, and the stranger thirteen, a person came in, 
and said, "What! are you here, Cavanagh?" The words 



The Indian Jugglers 139 

were no sooner pronounced than the astonished player let 
the ball drop from his hand, and saying, "What! have I been 
breaking my heart all this time to beat Cavanagh ? " refused 
to make another effort. "And yet, I give you my word," 
said Cavanagh, telling the story with some triumph, " I played 
all the while with my clenched fist." — He used frequently to 
play matches at Copenhagen-house for wagers and dinners. 
The wall against which they play is the same that supports 
the kitchen-chimney, and when the wall resounded louder 
than usual, the cooks exclaimed, "Those are the Irishman's 
balls," and the joints trembled on the spit! — Goldsmith 
consoled himself that there were places where he too was 
admired : and Cavanagh was the admiration of all the fives- 
courts, where he ever played. Mr Powell, when he played 
matches in the Court in St Martin's-street, used to fill his 
gallery at half a crown a head, with amateurs and admirers 
of talent in whatever department it is shown. He could 
not have shown himself in any ground in England, but he 
would have been immediately surrounded with inquisitive 
gazers, trying to find out in what part of his frame his unrivalled 
skill lay, as politicians wonder to see the balance of Europe 
suspended in Lord Castlereagh's face, and admire the trophies 
of the British Navy lurking under Mr Croker's hanging brow. 
Now Cavanagh was as good-looking a man as the Noble 
Lord, and much better looking than the Right Hon. Secretary. 
He had a clear, open countenance, and did not look sideways 
or down, Hke Mr Murray the bookseller. He was a young 
fellow of sense, humour, and courage. He once had a quarrel 
with a waterman at Hungerford-stairs, and, they say, served 
him out in great style. In a word, there are hundreds at 
this day, who cannot mention his name without admiration, 
as the best fives-player that perhaps ever lived (the greatest 
excellence of which they have any notion) — and the noisy 
shout of the ring happily stood him in stead of the unheard 
voice of posterity! — The only person who seems to have 
excelled as much in another way as Cavanagh did in his, was 
the late John Davies, the racket-player. It was remarked 
of him that he did not seem to follow the ball, but the ball 
seemed to follow him. Give him a foot of wall, and he was 
sure to make the ball. The four best racket-players of that 



140 The Indian Jugglers 

day were Jack Spines, Jem. Harding, Armitage, and Church. 
Davies could give any one of these two hands a time, that is, 
half the game, and each of these, at their best, could give the 
best player now in London the same odds. Such are the 
gradations in all exertions of human skill and art. He once 
played four capital players together, and beat them. He was 
also a first-rate tennis-player, and an excellent fives-player. 
In the Fleet or King's Bench, he would have stood against 
Powell, who was reckoned the best open-ground player of his 
time. This last-mentioned player is at present the keeper 
of the Fives-court, and we might recommend to him for a 
motto over his door — "Who enters here, forgets himself, his 
country, and his friends." And the best of it is, that by the 
calculation of the odds, none of the three are worth remem- 
bering! — Cavanagh died from the bursting of a blood-vessel, 
which prevented him from playing for the last two or three 
years. This, he was often heard to say, he thought hard upon 
him. He was fast recovering, however, when he was suddenly 
carried off, to the regret of all who knew him. As Mr Peel 
made it a qualification of the present Speaker, Mr Manners 
Sutton, that he was an excellent moral character, so Jack 
Cavanagh was a zealous Catholic, and could not be persuaded 
to eat meat on a Friday, the day on which he died. We have 
paid this willing tribute to his memory. 

Let no rude hand deface it, 
And his forlorn ''Hie Jacet", 



ON GOING A JOURNEY 

One of the pleasantest things in the world is going a journey ; 
but I Hke to go by myself. I can enjoy society in a room ; but 
out of doors, nature is company enough for me. I am then 
never less alone than when alone. 

The fields his study, nature was his book. 

I cannot see the wit of walking and talking at the same 
time. When I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the 
country. I am not for criticising hedge-rows and black 
cattle. I go out of town in order to forget the town and 
all that is in it. There are those who for this purpose go to 
watering-places, and carry the metropolis with them. I like 
more elbow-room, and fewer incumbrances. I like solitude, 
when I give myself up to it, for the sake of solitude; nor 
do I ask for 

a friend in my retreat, 

Whom I may whisper soHtude is sweet. 

The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, 
feel, do just as one pleases. We go a journey chiefly to be 
free of all impediments and of all inconveniences; to leave 
ourselves behind, much more to get rid of others. It is 
because I want a little breathing-space to muse on indifferent 
matters, where Contemplation 

May plume her feathers and let grow her wings, 

That in the various bustle of resort 

Were all too ruffled, and sometimes Impair'd, 

that I absent myself from the town for awhile, without feeling 
at a loss the moment I am left by myself. Instead of a friend 
in a post-chaise or in a Tilbury, to exchange good things with, 
and vary the same stale topics over again, for once let me have 
a truce with impertinence. Give me the clear blue sky over 
my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road 



142 On Going a Journey 

before me, and a three hours' march to dinner — and then to 
thinking! It is hard if I cannot start some game on these 
lone heaths. I laugh, I run, I leap, I sing for joy. From the 
point of yonder rolling cloud, I plunge into my past being, 
and revel there, as the sun-burnt Indian plunges headlong 
into the wave that wafts him to his native shore. Then long- 
forgotten things, like 'sunken wrack and sumless treasuries,' 
burst upon my eager sight, and I begin to feel, think, and be 
myself again. Instead of an awkward silence, broken by 
attempts at wit or dull common-places, mine is that undisturbed 
silence of the heart which alone is perfect eloquence. No one 
likes puns, alliterations, antitheses, argument, and analysis 
better than I do; but I sometimes had rather be without them. 
'Leave, oh, leave me to my repose!' I have just now other 
business in hand, which would seem idle to you, but is with me 
'very stuff of the conscience.' Is not this wild rose sweet 
without a comment ? Does not this daisy leap to my heart 
set in its coat of emerald ? Yet if I were to explain to you the 
circumstance that has so endeared it to me, you would only 
smile. Had I not better then keep it to myself, and let it 
serve me to brood over, from here to yonder craggy point 
and from thence onward to the far-distant horizon ? I should 
be but bad company all that way, and therefore prefer being 
alone. I have heard it said that you may, when the moody 
fit comes on, walk or ride on by yourself, and indulge your 
reveries. But this looks like a breach of manners, a neglect 
of others, and you are thinking all the time that you ought 
to rejoin your party. 'Out upon such half-faced fellowship,' 
say I. I like to be either entirely to myself, or entirely at 
the disposal of others; to talk or be silent, to walk or sit 
still, to be sociable or solitary. I was pleased with an observa- 
tion of Mr Cobbett's, that 'he thought it a bad French custom 
to drink our wine with our meals, and that an Englishman 
ought to do only one thing at a time.' So I cannot talk and 
think, or indulge in melancholy musing and hvely conversation 
by fits and starts. 'Let me have a companion of my way,' 
says Sterne, 'were it but to remark how the shadows lengthen 
as the sun decHnes.' It is beautifully said : but in my opinion, 
this continual comparing of notes interferes with the involuntary 
impression of things upon the mind, and hurts the sentiment. 



On Going a Journey 143 

If you only hint what you feel in a kind of dumb show, it is 
insipid: if you have to explain it, it is making a toil of a 
pleasure. You cannot read the book of nature, without 
being perpetually put to the trouble of translating it for the 
benefit of others. I am for the synthetical method on a journey, 
in preference to the analytical. I am content to lay in a stock 
of ideas then, and to examine and anatomise them afterwards. 
I want to see my vague notions float Uke the down of the 
thistle before the breeze, and not to have them entangled in 
the briars and thorns of controversy. For once, I Hke to 
have it all my own way; and this is impossible unless you 
are alone, or in such company as I do not covet. I have no 
objection to argue a point with any one for twenty miles of 
measured road, but not for pleasure. If you remark the scent 
of a beanfield crossing the road, perhaps your fellow-traveller 
has no smell. If you point to a distant object, perhaps he is 
short-sighted, and has to take out his glass to look at it. There 
is a feeling in the air, a tone in the colour of a cloud which 
hits your fancy, but the effect of which you are unable to 
account for. There is then no sympathy, but an uneasy 
craving after it, and a dissatisfaction which pursues you on 
the way, and in the end probably produces ill humour. Now 
I never quarrel with myself, and take all my own conclusions 
for granted till I find it necessary to defend them against 
objections. It is not merely that you may not be of accord 
on the objects and circumstances that present themselves 
before you — these may recal a number of objects, and lead 
to associations too delicate and refined to be possibly com- 
municated to others. Yet these I love to cherish, and 
sometimes still fondly clutch them, when I can escape from 
the throng to do so. To give way to our feelings before 
company, seems extravagance or affectation ; and on the other 
hand, to have to unravel this mystery of our being at every 
turn, and to make others take an equal interest in it (otherwise 
the end is not answered) is a task to which few are competent. 
We must 'give it an understanding, but no tongue.' My old 

friend C , however, could do both. He could go on in 

the most delightful explanatory way over hill and dale, a 
summer's day, and convert a landscape into a didactic poem 
or a Pindaric ode. 'He talked far above singing.' If I could 



144 O"^ Going a Journey 

so clothe my ideas in sounding and flowing words, I might 
perhaps wish to have some one with me to admire the swelHng 
theme; or I could be more content, were it possible for me 
still to hear his echoing voice in the woods of All-Foxden. 
They had 'that fine madness in them which our first poets 
had'; and if they could have been caught by some rare 
instrument, would have breathed such strains as the following. 

Here be woods as green 

As any, air likewise as fresh and sweet 
As when smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleet 
Face of the curled stream, with flow'rs as many 
As the young spring gives, and as choice as any; 
Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells, 
Arbours o'ergrown with woodbine, caves and dells; 
Choose where thou wilt, while I sit by and sing, 
Or gather rushes to make many a ring 
For thy long fingers; tell thee tales of love, 
How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove. 
First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes 
She took eternal fire that never dies; 
How she convey'd him softly in a sleep. 
His temples bound with poppy, to the steep 
Head of old Latmos, where she stoops each night, 
Gilding the mountain with her brother's light, 

To kiss her sweetest. 

Faithful Shepherdess. 

Had I words and images at command like these, I would 
attempt to wake the thoughts that He slumbering on golden 
ridges in the evening clouds: but at the sight of nature my 
fancy, poor as it is, droops and closes up its leaves, like flowers 
at sunset. I can make nothing out on the spot: — I must 
have time to collect myself. — 

In general, a good thing spoils out-of-door prospects: it 

should be reserved for Table-talk. L is for this reason, 

I take it, the worst company in the world out of doors ; because 
he is the best within. I grant, there is one subject on which 
it is pleasant to talk on a journey; and that is, what one shall 
have for supper when we get to our inn at night. The open 
air improves this sort of conversation or friendly altercation, 
by setting a keener edge on appetite. Every mile of the road 
heightens the flavour of the viands we expect at the end of it. 
How fine it is to enter some old town, walled and turreted, 
just at the approach of night-fall, or to come to some straggling 



On Going a Journey 145 

village, with the lights streaming through the surrounding 
gloom; and then after inquiring for the best entertainment 
that the place affords, to 'take one's ease at one's inn!' These 
eventful moments in our Hves' history are too precious, too 
full of solid, heartfelt happiness to be frittered and dribbled 
away in imperfect sympathy. I would have them all to 
myself, and drain them to the last drop : they will do to talk 
of or to write about afterwards. What a delicate speculation 
it is, after drinking whole goblets of tea, 

The cups that cheer, but not inebriate, 

and letting the fumes ascend into the brain, to sit considering 
what we shall have for supper — eggs and a rasher, a rabbit 
smothered in onions, or an excellent veal-cutlet! Sancho in 
such a situation once fixed upon cow-heel; and his choice, 
though he could not help it, is not to be disparaged. Then in 
the intervals of pictured scenery and Shandean contemplation, 
to catch the preparation and the stir in the kitchen — Procul, 
procul este frofani I These hours are sacred to silence and 
to musing, to be treasured up in the memory, and to feed 
the source of smiHng thoughts hereafter. I would not waste 
them in idle talk; or if I must have the integrity of fancy 
broken in upon, I would rather it were by a stranger than a 
friend. A stranger takes his hue and character from the 
time and place; he is a part of the furniture and costume of 
an inn. If he is a Quaker, or from the West Riding of York- 
shire, so much the better. I do not even try to sympathise 
with him, and he breaks no squares. I associate nothing with 
my travelHng companion but present objects and passing 
events. In his ignorance of me and my affairs, I in a manner 
forget myself. But a friend reminds one of other things, 
rips up old grievances, and destroys the abstraction of the 
scene. He comes in ungraciously between us and our imagi- 
nary character. Something is dropped in the course of 
conversation that gives a hint of your profession and pursuits ; 
or from having some one with you that knows the less sublime 
portions of your history, it seems that other people do. You 
are no longer a citizen of the world: but yo^r 'unhoused 
free condition is put into circumscription and confine.' The 
incognito of an inn is one of its striking privileges — 'lord of 



146 On Going a Journey 

one's-self, uncumber'd with a name.' Oh ! it is great to shake 
off the trammels of the world and of public opinion — to lose 
our importunate, tormenting, everlasting personal identity in 
the elements of nature, and become the creature of the moment, 
clear of all ties — to hold to the universe only by a dish of 
sweet-breads, and to owe nothing but the score of the evening 
— and no longer seeking for applause and meeting with 
contempt, to be known by no other title than the Gentleman 
in the parlour ! One may take one's choice of all characters 
in this romantic state of uncertainty as to one's real pretensions, 
and become indefinitely respectable and negatively right-wor- 
shipful. We baffle prejudice and disappoint conjecture; and 
from being so to others, begin to be objects of curiosity and 
wonder even to ourselves. We are no more those hackneyed 
common-places that we appear in the world : an inn restores 
us to the level of nature, and quits scores with society ! I have 
certainly spent some enviable hours at inns — sometimes when 
I have been left entirely to myself, and have tried to solve 
some metaphysical problem, as once at Witham-common, 
where I found out the proof that likeness is not a case of the 
association of ideas — at other times, when there have been 
pictures in the room, as at St Neot's (I think it was), where 
I first met with Gribelin's engravings of the Cartoons, into 
which I entered at once, and at a little inn on the borders 
of Wales, where there happened to be hanging some of Westall's 
drawings, which I compared triumphantly (for a theory that 
I had, not for the admired artist) with the figure of a girl who 
had ferried me over the Severn, standing up in the boat 
between me and the twiHght — at other times I might mention 
luxuriating in books, with a peculiar interest in this way, 
as I remember sitting up half the night to read Paul and 
Virginia, which I picked up at an inn at Bridgewater, after 
being drenched in the rain all day; and at the same place 
I got through two volumes of Madame D'Arblay's Camilla. 
It was on the tenth of April, 1798, that I sat down to a volume 
of the New Eloise, at the inn at Llangollen, over a bottle of 
sherry and a cold chicken. The letter I chose was that in 
which St Preux describes his feehngs as he caught a glimpse 
from the heights of the Jura of the Pays de Vaud, which I 
had brought with me as a bonne louche to crown the evening 



On Going a Journey 147 

with. It was my birth-day, and I had for the first time come 
from a place in the neighbourhood to visit this delightful 
spot. The road to Llangollen turns off between Chirk and 
Wrexham; and on passing a certain point, you come all 
at once upon the valley, which opens like an amphitheatre, 
broad, barren hills rising in majestic state on either side, 
with 'green upland swells that echo to the bleat of flocks' 
below, and the river Dee babbling over its stony bed in the 
midst of them. The valley at this time 'glittered green with 
sunny showers,' and a budding ash-tree dipped its tender 
branches in the chiding stream. How proud, how glad I was 
to walk along the high road that overlooks the delicious 
prospect, repeating the lines which I have just quoted from 
Mr Coleridge's poems ! But besides the prospect which opened 
beneath my feet, another also opened to my inward sight, 
a heavenly vision, on which were written, in letters large as 
Hope could make them, these four words, Liberty, Genius, 
Love, Virtue ; which have since faded into the light of 
common day, or mock my idle gaze. 

The beautiful is vanished, and returns not. 

Still I would return some time or other to this enchanted 
spot; but I would return to it alone. What other self could 
I find to share that influx of thoughts, of regret, and delight, 
the fragments of which I could hardly conjure up to myself, 
so much have they been broken and defaced ! I could stand 
on some tall rock, and overlook the precipice of years that 
separates me from what I then was. I was at that time going 
shortly to visit the poet whom I have above named. Where 
is he now? Not only I myself have changed; the world, 
which was then new to me, has become old and incorrigible. 
Yet will I turn to thee in thought, O sylvan Dee, in joy, 
in youth and gladness as thou then wert ; and thou shalt 
always be to me the river of Paradise, where I will drink of 
the waters of life freely! 

There is hardly any thing that shows the short-sightedness 
or capriciousness of the imagination more than travelling 
does. With change of place we change our ideas; nay, our 
opinions and feelings. We can by an effort indeed transport 
ourselves to old and long-forgotten scenes, and then the 



148 On Going a Journey 

picture of the mind revives again; but we forget those that 
we have just left. It seems that we can think but of one place 
at a time. The canvas of the fancy is but of a certain extent, 
and if we paint one set of objects upon it, they immediately 
efface every other. We cannot enlarge our conceptions, we 
only shift our point of view. The landscape bares its bosom 
to the enraptured eye, we take our fill of it, and seem as if 
we could form no other image of beauty or grandeur. We 
pass on, and think no more of it : the horizon that shuts it from 
our sight, also blots it from our memory Hke a dream. In 
travelHng through a wild barren country, I can form no idea 
of a woody and cultivated one. It appears to me that all 
the world must be barren, like what I see of it. In the country 
we forget the town, and in town we despise the country. 
'Beyond Hyde Park,' says Sir Fophng Flutter, *all is a desert.' 
All that part of the map that we do not see before us is a 
blank. The world in our conceit of it is not much bigger 
than a nutshell. It is not one prospect expanded into another, 
county joined to county, kingdom to kingdom, lands to seas, 
making an image voluminous and vast; — the mind can form 
no larger idea of space than the eye can take in at a single 
glance. The rest is a name written in a map, a calculation 
of arithmetic. For instance, what is the true signification 
of that immense mass of territory and population, known by 
the name of China to us ? An inch of paste-board on a wooden 
globe, of no more account than a China orange ! Things near us 
are seen of the size of life : things at a distance are diminished 
to the size of the understanding. We measure the universe 
by ourselves, and even comprehend the texture of our own 
being only piece-meal. In this way, however, we remember 
an infinity of things and places. The mind is like a mechanical 
instrument that plays a great variety of tunes, but it must 
play them in succession. One idea recalls another, but it at 
the same time excludes all others. In trying to renew old 
recollections, we cannot as it were unfold the whole web of 
our existence; we must pick out the single threads. So in 
coming to a place where we have formerly lived and with 
which we have intimate associations, every one must have 
found that the feeling grows more vivid the nearer we approach 
the spot, from the mere anticipation of the actual impression : 



On Going a Journey 149 

we remember circumstances, feelings, persons, faces, names, 
that we had not thought of for years; but for the time all 
the rest of the world is forgotten ! — To return to the question 
I have quitted above. 

I have no objection to go to see ruins, aqueducts, pictures, 
in company with a friend or a party, but rather the contrary, 
for the former reason reversed. They are intelligible matters, 
and will bear talking about. The sentiment here is not tacit, 
but communicable and overt. Salisbury Plain is barren of 
criticism, but Stonehenge will bear a discussion antiquarian, 
picturesque, and philosophical. In setting out on a party 
of pleasure, the first consideration always is where we shall 
go to: in taking a solitary ramble, the question is what we 
shall meet with by the way. 'The mind is its own place'; 
nor are we anxious to arrive at the end of our journey. I can 
myself do the honours indifferently well to works of art and 
curiosity. I once took a party to Oxford with no mean eclat — 
shewed them that seat of the Muses at a distance, 

With glistering spires and pinnacles adorn'd — 

descanted on the learned air that breathes from the grassy 
quadrangles and stone walls of halls and colleges — was at home 
in the Bodleian; and at Blenheim quite superseded the 
powdered Cicerone that attended us, and that pointed in 
vain with his wand to common-place beauties in matchless 
pictures. — As another exception to the above reasoning, 
I should not feel confident in venturing on a journey in a foreign 
country without a companion. I should want at intervals 
to hear the sound of my own language. There is an involun- 
tary antipathy in the mind of an Englishman to foreign manners 
and notions that requires the assistance of social sympathy 
to carry it off. As the distance from home increases, this 
relief, which was at first a luxury, becomes a passion and an 
appetite. A person would almost feel stifled to find himself 
in the deserts of Arabia without friends and countrymen: 
there must be allowed to be something in the view of Athens 
or old Rome that claims the utterance of speech; and I own 
that the Pyramids are too mighty for any single contemplation. 
In such situations, so opposite to all one's ordinary train of 
ideas, one seems a species by one's-self, a limb torn off from 
society, unless one can meet with instant fellowship and 



150 On Going a Journey 

support. — Yet I did not feel this want or craving very pressing 
once, when I first set my foot on the laughing shores of France. 
Calais was peopled with novelty and delight. The confused, 
busy murmur of the place was like oil and wine poured into 
my ears; nor did the mariners' hymn, which was sung from 
the top of an old crazy vessel in the harbour, as the sun went 
down, send an alien sound into my soul. I only breathed 
the air of general humanity. I walked over ' the vine-covered 
hills and gay regions of France,' erect and satisfied; for the 
image of man was not cast down and chained to the foot 
of arbitrary thrones: I was at no loss for language, for that 
of all the great schools of painting was open to me. The 
whole is vanished like a shade. Pictures, heroes, glory, 
freedom, all are fled: nothing remains but the Bourbons and 
the French people! — There is undoubtedly a sensation in 
travelling into foreign parts that is to be had nowhere else: 
but it is more pleasing at the time than lasting. It is too 
remote from our habitual associations to be a common topic 
of discourse or reference, and, like a dream or another state 
of existence, does not piece into our daily modes of life. It is 
an animated but a momentary hallucination. It demands 
an effort to exchange our actual for our ideal identity; and 
to feel the pulse of our old transports revive very keenly, we 
must 'jump' all our present comforts and connexions. Our 
romantic and itinerant character is not to be domesticated. 
Dr Johnson remarked how little foreign travel added to the 
facilities of conversation in those who had been abroad. 
In fact, the time we have spent there is both delightful and 
in one sense instructive; but it appears to be cut out of our 
substantial, downright existence, and never to join kindly on 
to it. We are not the same, but another, and perhaps more 
enviable individual, all the time we are out of our own country. 
We are lost to ourselves, as well as our friends. So the poet 
somewhat quaintly sings, 

Out of my country and myself I go. 
Those who wish to forget painful thoughts, do well to absent 
themselves for a while from the ties and objects that recal 
them : but we can be said only to fulfil our destiny in the place 
that gave us birth. I should on this account like well enough 
to spend the whole of my life in travelHng abroad, if I could 
any where borrow another life to spend afterwards at home ! — 



NOTES 



MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS 

First published in The Liberal, 1823, and included in the Literary 
Remains and the Winterslow volume. One paragraph, that beginning 
"It was in January 1798" and ending with the quotation "Like to 
that sanguine flower inscribed with woe" had appeared in 18 17 in the 
form of a letter to Leigh Hunt's paper The Examiner. See below (the 
note on " Jus Divinum ") for a further account of this letter. 

p. I, 1. I. W m. Wem. 

p. I, 1. 3. dreaded name of Demogorgon. Paradise Lost, 11, 
964-5 : 

With him enthroned 
Sat sable-vested Night, eldest of things, 
The consort of his reign; and by them stood 
Orcus and Ades, and the dreaded name 
Of Demogorgon. 
Demorgorgon, oldest of the gods, the fabled ruler of Chaos, had so 
"dreaded" a name, that the world trembled at its sound. Compare 
Spenser, Faerie Qiieene, i, i, 37 : 

A bold bad man, that dar'd to call by name 
Great Gorgon, prince of darkness and dead night; 
At which Cocytus quakes, and Styx is put to flight. 
It is Demorgorgon who, in Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, dethrones 
Jupiter and secures the release of Prometheus. 

p. I, 1. ID. a round-faced man. Hazhtt's description of Coleridge 
as "a round-faced man in a short black coat" may be compared 
with De Quincey's first impression nine years later: "I immediately 
took my leave of Mr Poole, and went over to Bridgewater. I had 
received directions for finding out the house where Coleridge was 
visiting; and, in riding down a main street of Bridgewater, I noticed 
a gateway corresponding to the description given me. Under this 
was standing, and gazing about Mm, a man whom I will describe. 
In height he might seem to be about five feet eight (he was, in reality, 
about an inch and a half taller, but his figure was of an order which 
drowns the height); his person was broad and full, and tended even 
to corpulence ; his complexion was fair, though not what painters 
technically style fair, because it was associated with black hair; his 
eyes were large, and soft in their expression ; and it was from the 
pecuUar appearance of haze or dreaminess which mixed with their 
light that I recognised my object. This was Coleridge" (Literary 
Reminiscences, Works, Vol. 11, p. 150). 



152 Notes 

p. I, 1. 16. He did not cease. Hazlitt's witty gibe at Coleridge's 
power of monologue matches the anecdote related of Lamb, to whom 
Coleridge said, "Did you ever hear me preach, Charles?" "I n-never 
heard you d-do anything else," stuttered Lamb, in reply. 

p. I, 1. 19. fluttering the proud, etc. An adaptation of Coriolanus, 
V, vi, 114-115 : 

If you have writ your annals true, 'tis there 

That, like an eagle in a dovecote, I 

Fluttered your Volscians in Corioli; 

Alone I did it. 

p. I, 1. 23. High-born Heel's harp, etc. Gray, The Bard, 1. 28. 
Hoel and Llewelyn were traditional Welsh bards. 

p. 2, 1. 7. With Styx, etc. Pope, Ode on St Cecilia's Day : 
Though fate had fast bound her 
With Styx nine times round her. 
Yet music and love were victorious. 
— the reference being to Eurydice, and the conquest of the powers of 
the underworld by "Orpheus with his lute." 

p. 2, 1. 24. the fires in the Agamemnon. A reference to the 
speech of Clytemnestra in the Agamemnon of Aeschylus, describing 
how beacon after beacon flashed the news of the fall oiE Troy — just as, 
in Macaulay's famihar lines, the blazing hill-tops of England signalled 
the destruction of the Armada. 

p. 2, 1. 38. II y a des impressions, etc., "There are some 
impressions that neither time nor circumstances can obliterate. Were 
I to hve whole centuries, the sweet days of my youth could never 
return and never fade from my recollection." The passage resembles 
several sentences in Rousseau's Confessions and La Nouvelle HMo'ise. 

p. 3, 1. 5. And he went up, etc. Gospel of St John, vi, 15. 

p. 3, 1. 6. rose like a steam, etc. Comus, 1. 556: 
At last a soft and solemn-breathing sound 
Rose, like a steam of rich distilled perfumes. 
And stole upon the air. 
For another impressionable young listener's description of a great man 
in the pulpit, see Matthew Arnold's exquisite vignette of Newman : 
"Who could resist the charm of that spiritual apparition, gliding in 
the dim afternoon light through the aisles of St Mary's, rising into the 
pulpit, and then, in the most entrancing of voices, breaking the silence 
with words and thoughts which were a rehgious music — subtle, sweet, 
mournful? I seem to hear him still, sajdng: 'After the fever of life, 
after wearinesses and sicknesses, fightings and despondings, languor 
and fretfulness, struggling and succeeding; after all the changes and 
chances of this troubled, unhealthy state — at length comes death, at 
length the white throne of God, at length the beatific vision'." 

p. 3, 1. 12. of one crying, etc. Gospel of St Matthew, iii, 13-14. 

p. 3, 1. 15. The sermon was upon, etc. See note below on 
"Jus Divinum." 

p. 3, 1. 28. cue. We should spell it now in its French form — "queue." 
a pig-tail. 



My First Acquaintance with Poets 153 

p. 3, 1. 30. Such were the notes, etc. Pope, Epistle to Robert 
Earl of Oxford, etc. — the opening lines : 

Such were the notes thy once-loved Poet sung, 
TiU Death untimely stopped his tuneful tongue. 

Harley's "once-loved poet" was Parnell, author of The Hermit. 

p. 4, 1. 3. Jus Divinura, Divine Right. This allusion needs 
some explanation. As I have noted above, the present paragraph of 
this essay appeared in The Examiner of 12 Jan. 1817, in the form of 
a letter to the editor. The Examiner of 29 December 18 16, had 
published from the pen of Hazhtt a long anonymous review of 
Coleridge's pamphlet The Statesman's Manual; or The Bible the best 
Guide to Political Skill and Foresight, A Lay Sermon addressed to the 
Higher Classes of Society. Coleridge, who had begun political life 
as a revolutionist and religious life as a unitarian, had come round 
to a conservative view both of state and church. HazUtt, with all 
the fervour of a consistent revolutionist, hated Coleridge for his 
apostasy. In the Statesman' s Manual occurs a sentence which Hazhtt 
seized upon as proof that Coleridge was now prepared even to uphold 
the Stewart theory of "Divine Right." Hazlitt devotes several passages 
of his article to comments upon "Jus Divinum"; and so a reference 
to it in a letter pubUshed a fortnight later was quite intelligible to 
readers of The Examiner. But by 1823 when this paragraph was 
incorporated into the long essay as we now have it, the allusion had 
become obscure. The point is this: the Coleridge of 1798 abhorred 
the doctrine of "Jus Divinum" which the Coleridge of 1816 was 
prepared to bless. The whole description of the sermon at Wem is 
plainly written with the intention of emphasising Coleridge's change 
of pohtical faith. In The Examiner the sentence appears thus: "That 
sermon, like this Sermon, was upon peace and war; upon church 
and state — not their alliance, but their separation," etc. And at the 
conclusion of his letter Hazlitt writes : "Again, Sir, I ask Mr Coleridge, 
why, having preached such a sermon as I have described [i.e. the sermon 
of 1798 at Wem], he has published such a sermon as you have described " 
[i.e. the Lay Sermon of 1816]. The letter in The Examiner was signed 
"Semper Ego Auditor" and was couched in such terms as to imply 
that the writer was not the author of the article on Coleridge's volume. 
See Works, Vol. iii, for the article in question. 

p. 4, 1. 4. Like to that sanguine flower. Lycidas, 1. 106. 

p. 4, 1. 17. As are the children, etc. Thomson, The Castle of 
Indolence, Canto 11, St. 33 : 

He came, the Bard, a little Druid wight 
Of withered aspect; but his eye was keen, 
With sweetness mixed. In russet brown bedight. 
As is his sister of the copses green, 
He crept along, unpromising of mien. 
Gross he who judges so. His soul was fair. 
Bright as the children of yon azure sheen! 
True comeUness, which nothing can impair, 
Dwells in the mind: all else is vanity and glare. 



154 Notes 

p. 4, 1. 2o. A certain tender bloom, etc. Thomson, The Castle 
of Indolence, Canto i. St. 57: 

Of all the gentle tenants of the place. 
There was a man of special grave remark; 
A certain tender bloom o'erspread his face, 
Pensive, not sad. 

p. 4, 1. 23. Murillo and Velasquez. Bartolom6 Esteban Murillo 
(1618-1682), a very popular Spanish painter, whose work falls roughly 
into two main groups, — vigorous and realistic sketches of Spanish 
beggar children, and rather sentimental rehgious pictures with the 
Virgin Mary as the central figure. Murillo is fairly well represented 
at the National Gallery and at Dulwich. His portraits are extremely 
few and not generally known. On the other hand, Don Diego de Silva 
y Velasquez (1599-1660), the greatest of Spanish painters and one of 
the supreme artists of the world, is specially renowned for his portraits 
of princes, nobles, ladies and buffoons of the Spanish court. There are 
a few important pictures by Velasquez in the National Gallery and the 
Wallace collection ; but the bulk of his work has to be sought in Spain. 

p. 4, 1. 26. like what lie has done. Coleridge's work is, for 
the most part, fragmentary — mere beginnings of things that he had 
not will enough to finish. 

p. 4, 1. 34. inclining to the corpulent. Coleridge's own poem 
Youth and Age contains allusions to his personal appearance, e.g. : 

This body that does me grievous wrong, 
and, 

I see these locks in silvery slips. 
This drooping gait, this altered size. 
Hazlitt's description should be compared with the portraits of Coleridge 
by Peter Vandyke (1795) and by Robert Hancock (1796), both in the 
National Portrait Gallery. One of Coleridge's letters belonging to this 
period contains a remarkable self-portrait : ' ' Your portrait of yourself 
interested me. As to me, my face, unless when animated by immediate 
eloquence, expresses great sloth, and great, indeed, almost idiotic 
good-nature. Tis a mere carcass of a face ; fat, flabby, and expressive 
chiefly of inexpression. Yet I am told that my eyes, eyebrows and 
forehead are physiognomically good ; but of this the deponent knoweth 
not. As to my shape, tis a good shape enough if measured, but my gait 
is awkward, and the walk of the whole man indicates indolence capable 
of energies....! cannot breathe through my nose, so my mouth, with 
sensual thick lips, is almost always open... (Letter to John Thelwall, 
Nov. 19, 1796). 

p. 4, 1. 35. somewhat fat and pursy. A confusion of two 
entirely unconnected phrases in Hamlet ; first, the queen's exclamation 
in the duel scene (Act v, Sc. ii, 1. 298), "He's fat, and scant of breath," 
and next, Hamlet's speech to his mother (Act in, Sc. iv, 1. 153) : 
Forgive me this my virtue: 
For in the fatness of these pursy times 
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg. 
p. 5, 1. 8. Adam Smith. Adam Smith (i 723-1 790), the author 
of The Wealth of Nations. From 1751 to 1763 he was professor of 



My First Acquaintance with Poets 155 

philosophy at Glasgow. For an account of Adam Smith see Bagehot's 
essay Adam Smith as a Person. 

p. 5, 1. 29. no figures, etc. Julius Caesar, n, ii, 231 : 
Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber: 
Thou hast no figures nor no fantasies 
Which busy care draws in the brains of men. 
p. 6, 1. 27. Mary Wolstonecraft and Mackintosh. The attempts 
of the revolutionists to draw up a workable constitution for France were 
regarded in England with much sympathy by some and much contempt 
by others. The first serious attack on the reformers came in 1790 from 
the famous political philosopher Edmund Burke (i 729-1797) who, in 
his Reflections on the Revolution in France, ridiculed unsparingly the 
proposals of the constitutionalists, and appealed with eloquent and 
rhetorical fervour to prejudice and sentiment on behalf of the old order. 
Burke's pamphlet incurred the admiration of George III and the 
opposition of English liberals. Several replies were written, among 
them being The Rights of Man by Tom Paine (for whom see note on 
p. 157), the Vindiciae Gallicae of Sir James Mackintosh, and the Answer 
to Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution by Mary Wollstonecraft. 
Mackintosh (1765-1832), a writer on philosophy, law and history, was 
also famous as an Indian judge. See Macaulay's essay, and Hazlitt's 
sketch in The Spirit of the Age. Mary Wollstonecraft (i 759-1 797) 
was a pioneer of the movement which has given to women many rights 
in society, law and education formerly denied them. Her Vindication 
of the Rights of Women (1792) is a landmark of social progress. She 
married William Godwin, famous in his day as a philosopher, but 
remembered now almost solely for his connection with such men as 
Wordsworth, Shelley and Lamb. The daughter of Godviin and Mary 
Wollstonecraft became the second wife of Shelley. 

p. 7, 1. 4. a great opinion of Burke. HazUtt had every reason 
for hating Burke the apostle of reaction, and accordingly he says many 
hard things of the great politician. But on the other hand Hazlitt 
had the deepest admiration for Burke's rich power of mind and mastery 
of prose eloquence. Scattered up and down the essays are many 
glowing tributes to Burke, the more sincere as coming from an avowed 
opponent. See, for instance, "The Prose Style of Poets " (Plain Speaker), 
the "Character of Mr Burke" {Political Essays) and a reference on 
p. 69 of the present volume. 

p. 7, 1. II. Tom Wedg-wood. Thomas and Josiah Wedgwood 
were sons of the great potter, founder of the famous works at Etruria, 
and maker of the celebrated Wedgwood ware. They were both greatly 
interested in Coleridge, and hearing that he proposed to accept the 
post of unitarian minister for a stipend of ;^i50 a year, they offered 
him a present of ;^ 100 if he abandoned his intention and devoted himself 
to poetry and philosophy. Coleridge refused on the ground that 
;^ioo would soon be consumed and he would be as badly off as before. 
Whereupon Josiah (not Tom) wrote a letter on behalf of himself and 
his brother offering Coleridge an annuity of ;^i5o without any conditions. 
The annuity was regularly paid until 18 12 when Josiah Wedgwood 
withdrew his half of the contribution. 

p. 7, 1. 28. Holcroft. Thom.as Holcroft (1745-1809), a playwright 



156 Notes 

and novelist of importance in his day, now remembered as author of 
the comedy The Road to Ruin and as the subject of a biography 
written partly by Hazlitt. See also the next note. 

p. 7, 1. 28. He had been asked, etc. This is rather tangled. 
"He" and "him" are Coleridge and Holcroft respectively, i.e. "He 
(Coleridge) had been asked if he was not much struck with him 
(Holcroft), and he (Coleridge) said he thought himself in more danger 
of being struck by him (Holcroft). I (Hazlitt) complained that he 
(Holcroft) would not let me get on," etc. Hazlitt had met Holcroft 
and the Godwins in London about 1798. Holcroft was something of 
a philosopliical politician and was one of those people who were tried 
in 1794 for high treason under Pitt's measures against free speech and 
public discussion. 

p. 8, 1. II. the shores of old romance. A phrase from Words- 
worth's Poems on the Naming of Places — the fourth, that beginning 
"A narrow girdle of rough stones," etc.: 

Many such there are, 
Fair ferns and flowers, and chiefly that tall fern. 
So stately, of the Queen Osmunda named; 
Plant lovelier, in its own retired abode 
On Grasmere's beach, than Naiad by the side 
Of Grecian brook, or Lady of the Mere 
Sole-sitting by the shores of old romance. 

p. 8, 1.14. the Delectable Mountains. See The Pilgrim's Progress. 

p. 8, 1. 24. in Cassandra. Cassandra is a romance by Gautier 
de Costes, Seigneur de La Calprenfede, who was born in Gascony early in 
the seventeenth century and died in 1663. He wrote lengthy romances, 
the chief being Cassandra (10 volumes, 1642) and Cleopatra (10 volumes, 
1647), and also tragedies, among them being La Mort de Mithridate 
(1637), Jsanne, Reine d'Angleterre (1637) and Le Comte d'Essex, the 
last of which was very successful. Few modern readers have any 
direct acquaintance with the works of La Calpren^de; a reference 
in Boileau's Art of Poetry and others in the Letters of Mme de Sevigne 
usually satisfy most people's curiosity about this once popular writer. 
Hazlitt had doubtless read Cassandra in the translation of Sir George 
Cotterill, published in 1676 and several times reprinted. The exact 
allusion is as follows: " Never did Thunderbolt, falling at the foot of 
some young Shepherd, strike him with so strange a surprise as that did 
the Prince of Scythia, when he heard pronounced that hated, detested 
name of Perdiccas." Part 2, Book v. 

p. 8, 1. 32. Sounding on his way. Wliat Chaucer said of the 
Clerk of Oxenford is quite different : 

Sownynge in moral vertu was his speche. 
And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche. 
— "sownynge in" meaning "tending towards." There is no doubt that 
Hazlitt's memory confused these hues with another, and much later 
passage : 

By pain of heart — now checked — and now impelled — 
The intellectual power, through words and things, 
Went sounding on, a dim and perilous way! 
(Wordsworth, The Excursion, Bk iii, 11. 699-701.) 



My First Acquaintance with Poets 157 

p. 9, 1. 7. Htune. David Hume (1711-1776), the famous philo- 
sopher and historian. His cliief works are the Treatise on Human 
Nature (1739), Essays Moral and Political (1741-42), Inquiry into the 
Principles of Morals (1751) and Political Discourses (1752). 

p. 9, 1. 8. South's sermons. Robert South (1633-1716), a 
Restoration divine, is remembered for the racy vigour of his pubhshed 
sermons. Specimens of South can be found in all the usual books 
containing prose quotations. There is no obvious resemblance between 
Hume's Essay on Miracles and any of South's sermons; but Coleridge 
was rather given to discovering such imagined and always far-fetched 
resemblances. 

p. 9, 1. 8. Credat, etc. Horace, Satires, I, v, 100: 
credat Judaeus Apella, 
Non ego. 
"Let the Jew Apella beheve it; I don't." The Jews were regarded 
by the Romans as very credulous, and ready to beheve any improbable 
story. The saying is thus roughly equivalent to our "Tell that to the 
Marines." The name Apella stands for any Jew, and does not refer 
to a particular individual. 

p. 9, 1. II. choke-pears. Literally a fruit difficult to swallow 
because of its rough, astringent nature, and so, metaphorically, anything 
hard to understand. Hume's Treatise is, in point of style at least, 
much less "hard to swallow" than Hazhtt would make out. It may be 
noted here that Hazlitt was in the habit of italicising any of his words 
or phrases that seemed to depart from standard literary English. 

p. 9, 1. 17. Berkeley. George Berkeley (1685-1753), the bishop 
of Cloyne, famous as a philosophical writer. His chief works are A n 
Essay towards a New Theory of Vision (1709), A Treatise concerning the 
Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), Alciphr on {ly^z), and Sms (1744). 
His chief doctrine is that matter is not independent of mind — that we can 
know only what the mind perceives, and that what the mind does not 
perceive has no existence for us. The "refutation" by Johnson is 
given in Boswell under date 1763 : "After we came out of the church, 
we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious 
sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that everything 
in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied 
his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall 
forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot 
with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, 
"I refute it thus." Johnson's supposed "refutation" is quite inconclu- 
sive. The act of kicking the stone gave him a perception (or "idea," 
in Berkeley's language) of its solidity, and its solidity thus came into 
existence for him. 

p. 9, 1. 24. Tom Paine. Thomas Paine (i 737-1 809) was a writer 
on pohtics and reUgion. He went to America in 1774 and took the side 
of the rebellious colonies in liis pamphlet Common Sense — one of the 
earhest publications to advocate complete separation of the colonies 
from England. He fought on the American side and held a post in the 
rebel government. He returned to England and published in 1791-92 
his Rights of Man, an answer to Burke's Reflections on the French 



158 Notes 

Revolution. The book was prosecuted by the English government, 
and Paine escaped to France, where he was elected to the Convention 
and was imprisoned by Robespierre for advocating clemency to 
Louis XVI. After liis release he went to America, where he died. 
His last important work was The Age of Reason, an attack on orthodox 
religion. 

p. 9, 1. 28. Bishop Butler. Joseph Butler (1692-1750), Bishop 
of Durham, is one of the greatest of English theologians. In 1718 he 
was appointed preacher at the Rolls chapel (on the site of which the 
Record office now stands) and delivered there the Sermons (published 
in 1726) to which Coleridge refers. Ten years later he published his 
most famous work, The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to 
the Constitution and Course of Nature. The Sermons are indeed ex- 
cellent; but it is difficult to follow Hazhtt's (and Coleridge's) very 
pronounced preference of them to The Analogy, as the latter is very 
largely an extension and development of the thought expounded in 
the Sermons — notably in the first three, "Upon Human Nature," and 
the fifteenth, "The Ignorance of Man." 

p. 9, 1. 38. I had ■written a fe^v remarks, etc. A reference 
to Hazlitt's metaphysical essay published in 1805 aus An Essay on 
the Principles of Human Action: being an Argument in Favour of the 
Natural Disinterestedness of the Human Mind. Hazlitt's "discovery" 
was that the doctrine of the innate and necessary selfishness of the 
human mind, which he supposed to have been taught by philosophers 
like Hobbes, was quite untrue. Hazlitt alleged that disinterestedness 
was innate and that self-interest arose later out of habit and convenience. 
The "discovery" is hardly valid, and in any case it is of no practical 
importance. To speak unphilosophically, the qualities that men may 
be born with are much less important, practically, than the qualities 
that they undoubtedly live by. 

p. 10, 1. 18. the quaint Muse of Sir Philip Sidney. No doubt 

Hazhtt had in mind Sonnet lxxxiv in Astrophel and Stella: 
Highway ! since you my chief Parnassus be. 
And that my Muse, to some ears not unsweet. 
Tempers her words to trampling horses' feet 
More oft than to a chamber melody: 
Now, blessed you ! bear onward blessed me 
To her, where I my heart safeliest shall meet. 
My Muse and I must you of duty greet 
With thanks and wishes, wishing thankfully. 
Be you still fair ! honoured by public heed ! 
By no encroachment wronged ! nor time forgot ! 
Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed! 
And that you know I envy you no lot 
Of highest wish, I wish you so much bhss: 
Hundreds of years you Stella's feet may kiss! 

p. 10, 1. 25. Paley. William Paley (i 743-1 805), a theological 
writer. His chief works are, Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy 
(1785), Horae Paulinae (1790), Evidences of Christianity (1794) and 
Natural Theology (1802). 



My First Acquaintance with Poets 159 

p. 10, 1. 33. Kind and aSable, etc. A reminiscence of Adam's 
thanks to the archangel Raphael, Paradise Lost, viii, 646-650: 
Go, Heavenly Guest, Ethereal Messenger, 
Sent from whose sovran goodness I adore ! 
Gentle to me and affable hath been 
Thy condescension and shall be honoured ever 
With grateful memory. 

p. II, 1 3. another story. In chapter x of Biographia Literaria, 
Coleridge describes, with somewhat heavy-handed humour, how he 
went to sleep after being made ill by smoking; but his recorded 
remarks on awaking have nothing to do with the third or any other 
heaven : "Here and thus I lay, my face like a wall that is whitewashing, 
deathly pale, and with the cold drops of perspiration running down 
it from my forehead, while one after another there dropped in the 
different gentlemen who had been invited to meet and spend the evening 
with me, to the number of from fifteen to twenty. As the poison of 
tobacco acts but for a short time, I at length awoke from insensibility, 
and looked round on the party, my eyes dazzled by the candles which 
had been lighted in the interim. By way of reheving my embarrassment, 
one of the gentlemen began the conversation with, "Have you seen 
a paper to-day, Mr Coleridge?" "Sir," I rephed, rubbing my eyes, 
"I am far from convinced that a Christian is permitted to read either 
newspapers or any other works of merely political and temporary 
interest." The humour of the situation lies in the fact that the purpose 
of Coleridge's visit was to further the sale of his own periodical or 
newspaper. The Friend. 

p. II, 1. 10. Vision of Judgment. Southey's Vision of Judg- 
ment (1821) was a poem written in his capacity as Laureate, praising 
George III, who had died in the preceding year. It is introduced by 
an obsequious preface to George IV in which that monarch is credited 
with all the success of British arms during the late war. The poem 
is written in a sort of hexameter rhythm and has twelve short sections 
or cantos. It is a vision in which George III is seen at the gate of 
Heaven seeking admission. An angel summons all who wish to accuse 
him of misdeeds; but only two appear — Wilkes and Junius, and they 
are abashed to silence. Washington arrives and pleads for the king, 
who is thereupon admitted to Heaven, where he sees the glorious forms 
of other British monarchs surrounded by immortal spirits having the 
forms of Wolfe, Hogarth, Wesley, Mansfield, Burke and other famous 
persons. This painful absurdity of plan is reheved by no merit of 
execution, and the piece may be pronounced the worst of all Southey's 
attempts at the sublime. The other Vision of Judgment was Byron's, 
first pubUshed in The Liberal — the magazine in which Hazlitt's pre- 
sent essay appeared — and repubUshed in book form by John Murray. 
"The Bridge Street Junto" was "The Constitutional Association" 
founded in 1821, "to support the laws for suppressing seditious 
pubUcations, and for defending the country from the fatal influence 
of disloyalty and sedition." It was commonly known as "The Bridge 
Street Gang" ("junto" means "gang") from the situation of its office. 
As may be gathered from the statement of its aims, the Association 
was a thoroughly illiberal and repressive body. The point of HazUtt's 
gibe about the connection of John Murray with the "gang" lies in the 



i6o Notes 

fact that Byron's poem, which Murray published, was not merely a 
savage satire on Southey's latter-day loyalty, but a violent attack on 
the deceased George III. Thus Murray the pubhsher had actually 
issued one of the "disloyal and seditious publications" which Murray 
the "Constitutionalist" was solemnly pledged to suppress. 

p. II, 1. 20. Llangollen. See the essay "On Going a Journey" 
(p. 146, 1. 35) for the passage in which Hazlitt describes how he cele- 
brated his birthday in this year. 

p. II, 1. 22. Coleridge's description of England. Ode on the 
Departing Year, vii : 

Not yet enslaved, not whoUy vile, 
O Albion ! O my mother isle ! 
Thy valleys, fair as Eden's bowers. 
Glitter green with sunny showers; 
Thy grassy uplands' gentle swells 

Echo to the bleat of flocks; 
(Those grassy hills, those glittering dells 

Proudly ramparted with rocks) 
And Ocean mid his uproar wild 
Speaks safety to his Island-child ! 

p. II, 1. 40. Tom Jones. The adventures of Tom Jones at the 
Upton inn occupy several chapters in books ix and x of Fielding's 
novel. In chapter v of book x Sophia Western, also at Upton, sends 
Tom Jones her muff, hallowed to him by many sentimental associa- 
ti 'US, to reproach him for his supposed infidelity to her. 

p. 12, 1. 2. at Tewkesbury. See the essay " On Going a Journey," 
where the reading of Paul and Virginia is placed at Bridgwater. Paul 
and Virginia is the romance by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737-1814) 
whose Rousseau-like simplicity of sentiment was more popular in the 
eighteenth century than it is to-day. 

p. 12, 1. 13. Wordsworth... Poems on the Naming of Places. 
A set of five poems first published in vol. 11 of Lyrical Ballads (1800). 
The inscriptions in Paul and Virginia are certainly similar in idea, but 
the similarity implies no borrowing. Numbers of people have named 
familiar spots from personal and sentimental associations, as Words- 
worth did, when he called one place "Emma's Dell," another " Joanna's 
Rock" and a third "Point Rash-Judgment." 

p. 12, 1. 26. Camilla. Frances Burney (1752-1840), daughter 
of Dr Johnson's friend the musician Dr Burney, wrote a very successful 
novel Evelina (pubUshed in 1778), and, nearly twenty years after, 
a much less successful story, Camilla. She held a court appointment, 
and her letters and diaries give valuable sketches of the period. She 
married a French refugee, general D'Arblay. See also the essay 
" On Going a Journey." 

p. 12, 1. 36. Alfoxden. In 1797 Wordsworth, who, although he 
had by then written some of his early pieces, was only at the threshold 
of his poetic career, moved from Racedown in Dorset to Alfoxden, 
about three miles from Nether Stowey, where Coleridge was living. 
This was the richest and probably the happiest period of Wordsworth's 
Ufe. The two poets met often, and their many talks about the essentials 
of poetic art resulted in the appearance, not merely of a new volume. 



My First Acquaintance with Poets i6i 

Lyrical Ballads (1798), but also of a new and wonderful spirit in 
English poetry. See the latter part of Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, 
beginning at chapter xiv. Wordsworth did not have "free use" of 
Alfoxden. It was tenanted by one John Bartholomew, during the 
minority of the St Aubin heir, and sub-let to the poet for a rental of 
£2^, per annum. No doubt the " friend of the poet" was Thomas Poole, 
a tanner and leather merchant of Nether Stowey, who proved a most 
valuable friend to both Wordsworth and Coleridge. Poole was not in 
possession of the house, but he probably facilitated the business connected 
with Wordsworth's tenancy. 

p. 13, 1. 2. the scales that fence. This is an allusion to a passage 
quoted by HazJitt in the first of his Lectures on the Dramatic Literature 
of the Age of Elizabeth: "But in the Christian religion 'we perceive 
a softness coming over the heart of a nation, and the iron scales that 
fence and harden it, melt and drop off.'" 

p. 13, 1. 3. his sister. Dorothy, whose deep creative influence 
on her brother is gratefully acknowledged by Wordsworth, especially 
in the latter part of the wonderful Tiniern Abbey lines. 

p. 13, 1. 6. Sibylline Leaves. The sibyl or prophetess Amalthea 
of Cumae offered to sell her nine books of wisdom to Tarquin the Proud, 
king of Rome. He refused, whereupon she burned three and, a year 
later, offered the rest at the same price. He still refused, and again 
she burned three and offered the remainder at the same price. The 
surviving three were then purchased and carefully guarded in the temple 
of Jupiter, where also were kept the Sibylhne verses or various utterances 
of the prophetesses. Coleridge pubhshed a collection of his scatteDd 
poems under the title Sibylline Leaves. Hazlitt glances at this title 
in the present phrase, though what he actually meant was that he 
saw the manuscript of Lyrical Ballads in loose sheets. 

p. 13, 1. 13. hear the loud stag speak. Ben Jonson, The Forest. 
Ill ; To Sir Robert Wroth : 

Or, if thou list the night in watch to breake, 
A-bed canst heare the loud stag speake. 
p. 13. 1. 32. Betty Foy. This is Wordsworth's poem The Idiot 
Boy, which, with the other poems named, appeared in the Lyrical 
Ballads of 1798. 

p. 13, 1. 38. In spite of pride. Pope, The Essay on Man, i, 293 : 
And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite. 
One truth is clear, whatever is, is right. 
p. 14, 1. 4. While yet the trembling year, etc. Thomson, The 
Seasons, Spring, 1. 18: 

As yet the trembling year is unconfirmed, 
And Winter oft at eve resumes the breeze, 
Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleets 
Deform the day delightless. 
p. 14, 1. 7. Of Providence, etc. Paradise Lost, 11, 559-560: 
Others apart sat on a hill retired 
In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high 
Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will and Fate, 
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, 
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost. 



i62 Notes 

p. 14, 1. 29. Peter Bell. The potter, or pedlar of crockery-ware, 
"hero" (if he may be so called) of Wordsworth's poem bearing his 
name: 

He had a dark and sidelong walk, 
And long and slouching was his gait. 

p. 14, 1. 36. Chantry's bust. Sir Francis Chantrey (1781-1841), 
a poor iDoy who became a very distinguished sculptor. He left to the 
Royal Academy a very large sum of money, the interest on which was 
to be spent in purchasing native works of art. The purchases made 
under the Chantrey bequest are housed in the Tate gallery. Chantrey's 
bust of Wordsworth is at Coleorton, formerly the residence of Words- 
worth's friend Sir George Beaumont. 

p. 14, 1. 37. Haydon's head. Benjamin Haydon (1786-1846), 
the painter of historical pictures. The ultimate failure of his work, 
financially, led him to commit suicide. His most certain claim on 
the interest of posterity is based on his friendship and correspondence 
with John Keats. The picture "Christ entering Jerusalem," in which 
Wordsworth's head appears, is now in the Roman Catholic cathedral 
at Cincinnati. 

p. 15, 1. 9. Monk Lewis. Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818), 
called "Monk" from his romance, Ambrosio, or the Monk, was the 
writer of many now forgotten romances and plays. The Castle Spectre 
was "a dramatic romance" in five acts interspersed with occasional 
songs and choruses. 

p. 15, 1. 24. his face, etc. Macbeth, Act i. So. v, 1. 63-64: 
Your face, my thane, is as a book where men 
May read strange matters. 

p. 16, 1. 8. flip. A drink compounded of sugar and hot cider, wine, 
spirits or beer. Sometimes an egg was added, making what was 
called "egg-flip" or "egg-hot." This compound is endeared to all 
good readers by the frequent references to it in Lamb's letters. For 
instance: "That sonnet, Coleridge, brings afresh to my mind the time 
when you wrote those on Bowles, Priestley, Burke ; — 'twas two Christ- 
mases ago, and in that nice httle smoky room at the Salutation, which 
is even now continually presenting itself to my recollection with all 
its associated train of pipes, tobacco, egg-hot, welsh-rabbit, metaphysics 
and poetry. — Are we never to meet again? " "The Salutation and the 
Cat" was a hostelry in Newgate Street. 

p. 16, 1. 10. John Chester. Very little can be discovered of 
Chester beyond the facts that he was a very faithful and good-natured 
young man living at Nether Stowey, that he was fascinated by Coleridge's 
genius and that he accompanied Coleridge to Germany. Coleridge's 
references to him in the letters written from Germany are very brief 
and give no clue to the nature of their relations. 

p. 16, 1. 14. followed, etc. An inversion of Othello, Act li, 
Sc. iii, 1. 379, etc.: "I do follow here in the chase, not like a hound 
that hunts, but one that fills up the cry." A "cry" is a "pack." The 
point is that Chester was assiduous in following Coleridge, and was 
not content to be merely one of the crowd around him. 

p. 16, 1. 26. the Kantean philosophers. Immamiel Kant 
(1724-1804), one of the greatest of modern philosophers, was first 



My First Acquaintance with Poets 163 

made known to English people by men like Coleridge and De Oumcey. 
To be familiar with Kant in 1798 was to be very " advanced " in thought, 
and there is not wanting evidence that certain of his EngHsh disciples 
were incUned to parade their knowledge of him. Hence the faint 
sneer in Hazlitt's reference. The greatest work of Kant is the Critique 
of Pure Reason (1781). In this work he divides the fundamental 
concepts of the human understanding into twelve "categories" or 
orders — categories of quantity (unity, plurality, totality), categories of 
quality (reality, negation, limitation), categories of relation (substance, 
causalitv, reciprocity), categories of modality (possibility, actuality, 
necessity). Hence the allusion lower down to the "categories" of the 
Kanteans. 

p. 16, 1. 28. Sir Walter Scott's, or Mr Blackwood's. William 
Blackwood (i 776-1 834), the famous Edinburgh pubUsher. The refer- 
ence is doubtless to the banquet given to George IV at Edinburgh 
in 1822. 

p. 16, 1. 35. Gaspar Poussin's or Domenichino's. For 
Gaspard Poussin see p. 219. Domenichino, or "little Dominic," is the 
popular name of Domenico Zampieri (1581-1641), a painter of the same 
order as the Carracci, for whom see p. 223. Domenichino, once over- 
praised, is now much less highly esteemed. He specialised in dramatic 
landscapes, and is represented in the National Gallery by four fair 
pictures. 

p. 17, 1. 12. the Ancient Mariner. An allusion to the lines: 

The western wave was all a-flame, 
The day was well nigh done ! 

Almost upon the western wave 
Rested the broad bright Sun; 

When that strange shape drove suddenly 
Betwixt us and the Sun. 

And strait the Sun was fleck'd with bars, 

(Heaven's mother send us grace) 
As if thro' a dungeon grate he peer'd 

With broad and burning face. 

p. 17, 1. 14. the Valley of Rocks. This now very familiar spot 
is impressive enough, but rather less awe-inspiring than Hazlitt's 
description would suggest. 

p. 17, 1. 27. a prose-tale. This is The Wanderings of Cain, of 
which a fragment exists, usually included in collections of Coleridge's 
verse. Such a passage as the following applies very exactly to the Valley 
of the Rocks: "The pointed and shattered summits of the ridges of the 
rocks made a rude mimicry of human concerns, and seemed to prophesy 
mutely of things that then were not ; steeples, and battlements, and 
ships with naked masts." It is worth notice that the scenery of 
Wordsworth's Peter Bell, though supposed to represent the district of 
the Swale in Yorkshire, is really derived from Lynton, near and familiar 
to Wordsworth at the time when he was writing the poem. 

p. 17, 1. 28. the Death of Abel. A sort of prose poem, once 
popular, but now almost forgotten, written by Solomon Gessner 
(1730-88) a native of Zurich. 



164 Notes 

p. 18, 1. 24. Caleb Williams. A novel written by William 
Godwin. It is a study of social injustice in the "age of chivalry" at 
the end of the eighteenth century. 

p. 18, 1. 28. the ribbed sea-sands. Ancient Mariner: 
And thou art long and lank and brown 
As is the ribbed sea-sand. 

p. 18, 1. 31. A fisherixiEiii, etc. This sentence as it stands is 
quite bad. The first "that" clause is adjectival, qualifying "boy," 
the second "that" clause is noun object ungoverned by any verb or 
preposition. The insertion of "said" between "and" and "that" in 
line 32 provides the necessary governing verb. Hazlitt did not reprint 
this essay himself in any volume, so we have only the magazine text 
as our authority. 

p. 18 note. Buffamalco. Buonamico di Cristofano, called Buffal- 
macco (not Buffamalco) was a Florentine painter living between 1262 
and 1 35 1. Most of the works formerly attributed to this almost mythical 
artist are now assigned to other hands. Vasari and Boccaccio are the 
main sources of anecdotes about Buffalmacco, whose very existence 
has been questioned by modern criticism. It might be observed that 
Coleridge's ability to appreciate the moral conveyed by a picture 
implies no abihty to appreciate the picture. Quite good morals may 
be conveyed by hopelessly bad works of art. As Lamb points out, 
the moral of George Barnwell is much more obvious than the moral of 
Othello. 

p. 19, 1. II. explained at length elsewhere. In the Essay on 
the Principles of Human Action. 

p. ig, 1. 20. for Germany. Coleridge went to Germany in 
September 1798, and returned in July 1799. 

p. 19, 1. 29. his tragedy. Coleridge's Remorse was performed 
at Drury Lane in 1813 and ran for twenty nights, — quite a success 
in those days. The part of Don Alvar was taken by Robert William 
Elliston (1774-1831), the egregious and excessive actor immortaUsed 
by Lamb in the Essays of Elia. 

p. 20, 1. 9. But there is matter, etc. The last lines of Words- 
worth's Hart Leap Well, Pt i : 

The Knight, Sir Walter, died in course of time, 
And his bones lie in his paternal vale. — 
But there is matter for a second rhyme, 
And I to this would add another tale. 



i65 



ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS. I 

Essay in in The Plain Speaker. First published in The London 
Magazine, September 1820. 

p. 21, 1. 15. mum-chance. "Mumchance" or "mumbudget" was 
a game in which strict silence had to be kept. "Mum's the word" 
is a very old phrase for silence, originating from the fact that "mum" 
is a rough representation of all we can say when the lips are closed. 

p. 21, 1. 19. And of his port, etc. Chaucer, Prologue to the 
Canterbury Tales, 1. 69, part of the description of the knight : 
And though that he were worthy, he was wys. 
And of his port as meeke as is a mayde. 

p. 21, 1. 24. he is one that cannot, etc. From The Return 
from Parnassus, Act 11, Sc. 6, part of the description of a scholar. 
This very interesting play (1606) was first publicly acted by "the 
Students in St John's College in Cambridge," and is remarkable 
for its criticisms of many contemporary or lately- dead writers, such 
as Spenser, Daniel, Drayton, Marston, Marlowe and Shakespeare. It 
sketches the unhappiness of a poor scholar's life in terms that recall 
Dr Johnson's indictment : 

There mark what ills the scholar's life assail. 
Toil, env5^ want, the patron, and the jail. 
Hazlitt gives an account of The Return from Parnassus in the fifth 
of his Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth ; but 
all discussions of it have been superseded by the passages devoted to it 
in University Drama in Tudor Times by Dr F. S. Boas. The author of 
the play has not been identified. 

p. 21, 1. 30. He knows nothing, etc. This same charge has 
been brought against the mere author in an essay Shakespeare the 
Man by Walter Bagehot, whose work, generally, shows many signs 
of Hazlitt's influence : "The reason why so few good books are written, 
is that so few people that can write know anything. In general an 
author has always lived in a room, has read books, has cultivated 
science, is acquainted with the style and sentiments of the best authors, 
but he is out of the way of employing his own eyes and ears. He has 
nothing to hear and nothing to see. His life is a vacuum. ...Now, 
what can any one think of such a hfe — except how clearly it shows 
that the habits best fitted for communicating information... are exactly 
the habits which are likely to afford a man the least information to 
communicate." 

p. 22, 1. I. Quidnunc. A quidnunc is a busybody who makes 
it his business to hear all the gossip. The name comes from the T.atin 
interrogative quid, what, nunc, now. An inveterate gossip named 
Quidnunc is the chief character in a farce The Upholsterer, or What 
News? by Arthur Murphy (1727-1805). 

p. 22, 1. 3. TuU's Husbandry. A book on practical farming 
(1733) t>y Jethro TuU. An introduction was written for a later edition 
l3y William Cobbett, "the philosopher of Botley." William Cobbett 
( 1 762-1 835), son of a Hampshire farmer, led a varied life, first as a 



i66 Notes 

farmer's boy, then as a soldier, then as a poUtical refugee in America, 
and nearly all the time as a bold and vigorous pamphleteer, denouncing 
fearlessly the social and political abuses of the day. Cobbett, ardent 
reformer as he was, belonged in spirit to an older time — to a "Merrie 
England" of friendly (and possibly quite imaginary) feudalism, when 
England produced its own necessaries, when there was plenty in 
moderation for all, when labour dwelt on its own land, cultivated 
its own fields, fed its own beasts on unenclosed commons, and knew 
nothing of industrial slavery in the factories of vast and sordid slum- 
cities. Cobbett fought very vigorously against the coming invasion 
of commerciahsm with all its attendant evils of competitive wages, 
factories, huge and unwholesome towns, stock-jobbing and paper-money. 
His "Tory democracy" resembles, as it doubtless suggested, much in 
the "Young England" visions of Disraeli as set forth in Coningsby, 
Sybil and Tancred. Cobbett's strong, homely, powerful English 
is excellent. His Weekly Register (1802-1835) was a highly popular 
organ of public opinion. His innumerable works include Advice 
to Young Men, a very readable English Grammar, a History of the 
Reformation, and Rural Rides, a most valuable account of agricultural 
England in the early years of the nineteenth century — when, indeed, 
agricultural England was passing away before the new England of 
commerce. Cobbett lived for many years at Botley in Hampshire, 
hence Hazlitt's reference to "the philosopher of Botley." For Hazhtt's 
view of Cobbett see Tha Spirit of the Age, or Table-Talk — the essay 
appears in both books. 

p. 23, 1. I. Montaigne's Essays. Michel de Montaigne (1533- 
1592), a French nobleman, immortal as the author of essays that are 
delightful in themselves and important as being the original from which 
many other personal essays have descended. A translation of Montaigne 
into English by John Florio was known to and used by Shakespeare. 

p. 23, 1. 2. Dilworth's Spelling Book. A well-known eighteenth 
century primer. 

p. 23, 1. 2. Fearne's Treatise. A law-book (1772) that was 
for a long while an authority on its subject. 

p. 23, 1. 20. etherlal mould, sky- tinctured. A reminiscence 
of two passages in Paradise Lost : 

our great Enemy 
All incorruptible, would on his throne 
Sit unpolluted, and the ethereal mould, 
Incapable of stain, would soon expel 
Her mischief. (11, 139.) 

Six wings he wore, to shade 
His lineaments divine: the pair that clad 
Each shoulder broad came mantling o'er his breast 
With regal ornament; the middle pair 
Girt like a starry zone his waist, and round 
Skirted his loins and thighs with downy gold 
And colours dipt in Heaven; the third his feet 
Shadowed from either heel with feathered mail, 
Sky-tinctured grain, (v, 285.) 



On the Conversation of Authors. I 167 

p. 23, 1. 29. breathe in other air. Paradise Lost, xi, 284-285 : 
How shall we breathe in other air 
Less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits? 
p. 23, 1. 32. confined and cabin'd in. Macbeth, Act iii, Sc. iv, 
I. 24: 

But now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in 
To saucy doubts and fears, 
p. 24, 1. 2. to cozen fortune. Merchant of Venice, Act 11, Sc. ix, 
37-39 : 

for who shall go about 
To cozen fortune and be honourable 
Without the stamp of merit? 
p. 24, 1. 3. because we are scholars, etc. Twelfth Night, Act 11, 
Sc. iii, 123, etc.: "Art any more than a steward? Dost thou think, 
because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" 
p. 24, 1. 28. ■where I write this. Winterslow Hut, SaUsbury Plain, 
p. 24, 1. 35. The wretched slave. Henry V, Act iv, Sc. i, 11. 285- 
294. Hazlitt has abbreviated the passage : 

The wretched slave 
Who, with a body filled and vacant mind. 
Gets him to rest, crammed with distressful bread. 
Never sees horrid Night, the child of Hell, 
But, Uke a lackey, from the rise to set. 
Sweats, etc. 
Hyperion the Titan was the predecessor of Phoebus in driving the horses 
that drew the sun on its daily journey. 

p. 25, 1. I. Ephemerides. Plural of "ephemeris," a diary, and 
so an account of one's own life. Possibly Hazhtt is casting a hint at 
Coleridge's Biographia Literaria. 

p. 25, 1. 15. Congreve. Wilham Congreve (1670-1729), author 
of The Way of the World, Love for Love, The Double Dealer, etc. The 
first named is one of the most brilliant of English prose comedies. 
Congreve's verse tragedy The Mourning Bride gives us, in its first line, 
the familiar quotation : 

Music has charms to soothe the savage breast. 

p. 25, 1. 19. Machiavel. Niccol6 Machiavelli (1469-1527), the 
Florentine historian, statesman and political philosopher, author of 
The Prince, a treatise on government, long supposed (rather stupidly) 
to represent the limit of devilish cunning in its teaching. 

p. 25, 1. 21. the New Eloise. The famous novel by Jean-Jacques 
Rousseau {1712-1778). Rousseau, who was born in Geneva, led a.- 
varied and harassed life. His writings — chief among them The Social 
Contract, ^rnile. La Nouvelle Hiloise and the Confessions — represent a 
revolt from the artificialities of civilisation in the direction of a simple, 
natural scheme of life and social relations. Their influence was very 
great ; in fact, Rousseau was one of the great educators of the generation 
that succeeded him, and the doctrines of liberty, equality, fraternity 
and the rights of man, dominant in the Revolution, were derived 
mainly from his teaching. The effect of Rousseau upon the life and 



i68 Notes 

thought of the time was somewhat similar to that of Tolstoy upon the 
present; but the two men were quite dissimilar in personal character. 

p. 26, 1. I. the Viscount of St Albans. Francis Bacon (1561- 
1626), the great lawyer, pliilosopher and essay writer. 

p. 26, 1. 8. stocks and stones. Julius Caesar, Act i, Sc. i, 1. 40 : 
You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things! 
Oh you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome! 
Probably the "stocks" came from Milton's sonnet On the Late Massacre 
in Piedmont : 

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones 
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold; 
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, 
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones. 
p. 26, 1. 10. a person of this class. Godwin, 
p. 26, 1. II. a celebrated authoress. It has been suggested that 
this refers to Fanny Burney, for whom see p. 160. Hazlitt had met 
captain James Burney, brother of the novelist, at the Lambs', and his 
daughter was, of course, Fanny Burney's niece. 

p. 26, 1. 36. Whose is the superscription? St Matthew's Gospel, 
xxii, 20. 

p. 26, 1. 39. G . Godwin, as elsewhere in this and the following 

essay. 

p. 26, 1. 40. C . Coleridge. In the preceding essay Hazhtt has 

remarked upon Coleridge's tendency to prefer the unknown to the 
known. 

p. 27, 1. II. Prometheus. Prometheus the Titan brought fire 
from heaven to mankind and first taught the human race the arts 
and sciences. The angry immortals, fearing that man would become 
as the gods, knowing good and evil, punished Prometheus by chaining 
him to a rock in the Caucasus where an eagle preyed upon his vitals. 
Prometheus Bound is a drama by the Greek poet Aeschylus, Prometheus 
Unbound a drama by the Enghsh poet Shelley. 

p. 27, 1. 27. virtu. An Itahan word meaning taste in the fine 
arts, much used in England about Hazhtt's time and earlier, but now 
far less frequently heard than its derivative "virtuoso," meaning one 
possessed of talent in the arts, especially great executive skill in music. 
This last limitation of its meaning seems now becoming definite. 

p. 27, 1. 39. flat, insipid, etc. A reminiscence of Hamlet, Act i, 
Sc. ii, 133 etc. : 

Oh God ! God ! 
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable 
Seem to me all the uses of this world. 

p. 28, 1. 36. subjects of fancy. Prize-fighting. 

p. 29, 1. 2. double entendre. The usual version in England of 
double entente — double meaning. 

p. 29, note. The French... are a more sensible, etc. Such an 
assertion, which would pass nowadays almost unchallenged, required 
considerable courage to maintain in Hazlitt's day, when France was 
the hereditary enemy. 



On the Conversation of Authors. I 169 

p. 30, 1. 7. The fear of being silent, etc. A reminiscence of 
Cowper, Conversation, 352 : 

Our sensibilities are so acute, 

The fear of being silent makes us mute. 

p. 30, 1. 39. a remark of Rousseau's. That the proper study 
of mankind is not only man, but all the other facts of nature, and that 
a merely bookish knowledge is useless, and even dangerous, may be 
called the general theme of Rousseau's £mile, or Education, a treatise 
which, published in 1762, anticipates almost every recent development 
of educational theory. 

p. 31, 1. 15. Grimm's Memoirs. Friedrich Melchior Grimm 
(1723-1807) was a German who made himself prominent by attaching 
himself to various French notabilities, thus getting into the main 
current of French life and literature. He was for a short time friendly 
with Rousseau, and for much longer with Diderot, to whom he addressed 
a voluminous literary and philosophical correspondence. He became 
secretarj? to the duke of Orleans and, imtil the Revolution, was a 
minister at the French court. An English version of his Memoirs 
published in 1S14 is noticed by Hazlitt in his Round Table essay On 
the literary Character, a paper that, in its general subject, should be com- 
pared with the present essay. Grimm's references to Rousseau are 
quite untrustworthy. 

p, 31 1. 28. We had good talk. See Boswell, under date 1768: 
"When I called upon Dr Johnson next morning, I found him highly 
satisfied with his colloquial prowess the preceding evening. 'Well 
(said he) we had good talk.' Boswell 'Yes, Sir; you tossed and gored 
several persons.'" 

p. 31, 1. 39. Gil Bias. The celebrated novel by Le Sage (1668- 
1747). There is no one set dispute in Gil Bias. In the first chapter 
young Gil is described as so fond of disputes that he stopped passers-by 
to argue with them. These discussions ended in grimaces, violent 
gestures, furious eyes and foaming mouths, till the disputants looked 
more like maniacs than philosophers. Another dispute, briefly described, 
is that of the wits and authors, friends of Nunnez. This ends in fisti- 
cuffs, the apostles of culture having to be violently parted by Gil Bias, 
Nunnez, Scipio and the lackeys. A third dispute is again that among 
critics and authors, friends of Nunnez, who are found discussing which 
is the chief character in the Iphigenia of Euripides. The bachelor 
Melchior de Villegas maintains that the chief character is the wind. 
He is violently opposed, but after mutual revilings, the disputants 
settle down to eating and drinking amicably together. 

p. 31, 1. 40. a very ingenious man. Sir John Stoddart, brother 
of Sarah Stoddart to whom Hazlitt was married. He was editor of 
The New Times for some years, and was very strong on the necessity 
for destrojnng Napoleon and restoring the Bourbons. 

p. 32, 1. 6. the chapter in Sterne. See A Sentimental Journey, 
second of the chapters entitled, "The Passport, Versailles." 

p. 33, 1. 13. villainous, and shews, etc. Hamlet, Act iii, Sc. ii, 
1. 48: "And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is 
set down for them; for there be of them that will themselves laugh, 
to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, 
in the mean time, some necessary question of the play be then to be 



I70 Notes 

considered : that's villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in 
the fool that uses it." 

p 33, 1. 17. When Greek meets Greek, etc. The usual mis- 
quotation of a Hne from the play The Rival Queens, or Alexander the 
Great, by Nathaniel Lee (1653-1692). It occurs in Act iv, sc. ii: 
Your father, Philip. I have seen him march. 
And fought beneath his dreadful banner, where 
The boldest at this table would have trembled. 
Nay, frown not, sir, you cannot look me dead. 
When Greeks joined Greeks, then was the tug of war, 
The laboured battle sweat, and conquest bled. 
p, 34. 1. 3. the pearls in the adage. In the "text," HazUtt 
should have said, for the reference is to St Matthew, vii, 6. No doubt 
Hazlitt had in his mind Lady Macbeth's "cat i' the adage." 

p. 34, 1. 8. of adepts, of illuminati. These words were specially 
applied to the initiated members of secret masonic societies that 
flourished on the continent during the eighteenth century. 



ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS. II 

Essay iv in The Plain Speaker. 

p. 35, 1. I. L 's. Lamb's. 

P- 35. 1- 3> the Small-coal man's musical parties. Thomas 
Britton (1654-1714) was a Northampton man who came up to London 
as a boy and learned the coal-trade. He afterwards set up for himself 
in a stable which he divided into two storeys, the lower being devoted 
to the sale of coal, and the upper to loftier purposes, for here he esta- 
blished in 1678 a sort of musical club or assembly, and for thirty-six 
years there were held, every Thursday, concerts of chamber music, 
both vocal and instrumental, attended by a mixed audience ranging from 
genuine musical amateurs to fashionable people who came out of curiosity. 
The greatest performers of the day could be heard in Britton's upper 
room, no less a person than Handel, for instance, appearing there as 
an organist. Britton was also a notable book-collector, and in his 
coal-seller's dress joined such noble lords as Harley, Sunderland, 
Pembroke and Devonshire in book-hunting expeditions. His death 
was as remarkable as his life ; for a ventriloquist, by way of a practical 
joke, having announced in a mysterious voice that he would shortly 
die, Britton received such a shock that he actually died a few days 
afterwards. 

p. 35, 1. 4. John Buncle. Thomas Amory (1691-1788), "the 
EngUsh Rabelais," was a very eccentric author, who produced various 
compilations, now forgotten, but wrote, as well, the Life of John Buncle, 
a kind of novel, part fact, part fancy, a curious blend of autobiography, 
theology and rhapsodical descriptions of impossible places. The wild 
scenes may be called without exaggeration the landscapes of a madman, 
and there is no doubt that Amory was not quite sane. One form of 
his eccentricity was a refusal to go out by day. He emerged at night- 
time and crept shyly and silently about the streets. For an enthusiastic 
account of John Buncle see Hazlitt's essay on that subject in The Round 
Table. 



On the Conversation of Authors. II 171 

p. 35; 1. 18. And, in our flowing cups, etc. An adaptation of 
Henry V, Act iv, Sc. iii, 11. 51-55: 

then shall our names, 
Familiar in his month as household words, 
Harry the King, Bedford and E.xeter, 
Warwick and Talbot, Sahsbury and Gloucester, 
Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered. 

p. 35, 1. 21. the old everlasting set. Most of the allusions 
here need no annotation. Others will be found explained elsewhere. 
John Gay (1685-1732). a prohfic author and wit, is now remembered 
mainly by his Fables, by such songs as Black-eyed Susan, and by 
The Beggar's Opera, a comedy interspersed with popular songs— the 
greatest theatrical success of its day. William Hogarth (1697-1764), 
the most English of painters, is well represented in the national 
collections, "Marriage a la Mode" being at the National Gallery, "The 
Election" and "The Rake's Progress" at the Soane Museum. His 
pictures were all engraved and pubhshed, hence the reference to prints. 
Lamb has an excellent essay on Hogarth. Claude's landscapes. Claude 
Gellee (1600-1682), often called Claude Lorrame from his birthplace, 
was a famous landscape painter. He spent much of his time in Italy, 
and was tireless in drawing and sketching from nature. The effect 
of this direct study can be seen in his painted pictures, which show 
a distinct leaning towards the modern, natural type of landscape. 
The National Gallery has several good Claudes. The Cartoons. The 
famous Raphael (1483-1520) drew, as designs for tapestry to be hung 
in the Sistine chapel at Rome, ten very large cartoons upon subjects 
from The Acts of the Apostles. Three of these are lost, but the other 
seven exist and are now at South Kensington. In Hazlitt's time they 
were at Hampton Court. 

p. 35, 1. 25. The Scotch Novels. The novels of Sir Walter 
Scott, pubhshed anonymously. The authorship of these novels was 
not publicly acknowledged by Sir Walter until 1827, though for some 
time he had been generally accepted as the writer. 

p. 35, 1. 27. The author of the Rambler. Dr Johnson. The 
Rambler was a periodical issue of little essays on the model of The 
Spectator. It ran from 1749 to 1752. In the Rambler essays Johnson's 
style reaches its limit of ponderosity : hence the preference in the text 
for his spoken words as recorded in Boswell's ever delightful Life. 

p. 35, 1. 30. Junius. From 1769 to 1772 a series of letters signed 
" Junius " appeared in The Public Advertiser attacking with polished ease 
and deadly skill the personal rule of George III and its political instru- 
ments. These letters, \\dth their command of facts, their outspoken 
directness, and their calm and merciless style, were an altogether new 
thing in English pohtical literature, and their fame has therefore 
endured to our time. The identity of "Junius" has never been con- 
clusively established. 

p. 36, 1. 2. a list of persons famous in history. See in the 
present volume the essay Of Persons one would wish to have seen. 

p. 36, 1. 3. Sir Thomas Browne. Sir Thomas Browne (1605- 
1682), the Norwich physician, author of Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia 
{or Urn Burial), The Garden of Cyrus and other works, has written 
the richest, most solemn and organ-like prose in our language. 



172 Notes 

p. 36, 1. 4. Dr Faustus. The mythical person whose bargain with 
the devil forms the subject of several medieval legends, and of two 
famous dramas, the Dr Faustus of Marlowe and the Faust of Goethe. 

p. 36, 1. 6. Donne. John Donne (1573-1631), dean of St Paul's 
and Enghsh poet. He is the subject of a delightful httle biography 
by Izaak Walton. 

p. 36, 1. 6. Sir Philip Sidney. Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), 
the famous Elizabethan courtier, scholar, poet and soldier, whose 
relinquishing of a glass of water, when he was wounded, to the greater 
necessity of a dying soldier, is an imperishable legend. He wrote a 
romance Arcadia which is very little read, an Apology for Poetry and a 
sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella. One of these sonnets is quoted 
on page 158. 

p. 36, 1. II. the sumptuous banquet. The feast with which 
Satan tempted Jesus after the forty days' fast in the wilderness. 
Paradise Regained, 11, 338-361 : 

Our Saviour, lifting up his eyes, beheld. 
In ample space under the broadest shade, 
A table richly spread in regal mode. 
With dishes piled and meats of noblest sort 
And savour — beasts of chase, or fowl of game, 
In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled, 
Grisamber-steamed ; all fish, from sea or shore. 
Freshet or purling brook, of shell or fin. 
And exquisitest name, for which was drained 
Pontus, and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast. 
Alas! how simple, to these cates compared. 
Was that crude apple that diverted Eve ! 
And at a stately sideboard, by the wine. 
That fragrant smell diffused, in order stood 
Tall stripling youths rich-clad, of fairer hue 
Than Ganymed or Hylas: distant more. 
Under trees now tripped, now solemn stood. 
Nymphs of Diana's train, and Naiades 
With fruits and flowers from Amalthea's horn. 
And ladies of the Hesperides, that seemed 
Fairer than feigned of old, or fabled since 
Of faery damsels met in forest wide 
By knights of Logres, or of Lyones, 
Lancelot, or Pelleas, or Pellenore. 
p. 36, 1. 24. piquet. A once popular card game. 
p. 36, 1. 27. Irish blackguard. This and Scotch rappee were 
varieties of snuff. 

p. 36, 1. 31. no mean person. It will be remembered that, 
in Lamb's immortal essay, Mrs Battle would lose a game rather than 
soil her lips with the ungenteel phrases demanded in the game of 
cribbage. 

p. 36, 1. 31. Ned P . Edward Phillips, who cannot be better 

described than in the words of one of Lamb's letters to Coleridge : 
"One piece of news I know will give you pleasure — Rickman is made 
Clerk to the House of Commons, ^^2000 a year with greater expectations 



On the Conversation of Authors. II 173 

— but that is not the news — it is that poor card-playing Phillips, that 
has felt himself for so many years the outcast of Fortune, . . .has strangely 
stepped into Rickman's Secretaryship — sword, bag, house and all — 
from a hopeless ,1^100 a year eaten up beforehand with desperate debts, 
to a clear ;^400 or ^500— it almost reconciles me to the belief of a moral 
government of the world — the man stares and gapes and seems to be 
always wondering at what has befallen him — he tries to be eager at 
Cribbage, but alas! the source of that Interest is dried up for ever, 
he no longer plays for his next day's meal, or to determine whether he 
shall have a half dinner or a whole dinner, whether he shall buy a 
pair of black silk stockings, or wax his old ones a week or two longer, the 
poor man's relish of a Trump, the Four Honours is gone — and I do not 
know whether, if we could get at the bottom of things, poor star-doomed 
Phillips with his hair staring with despair was not a happier being than 
the sleek well-combed oily-pated Secretary that has succeeded." 

p. 36, 1. 36. Baron Munchausen. Everyone is famiUar with 
the staggering unveracity of Baron Miinchhausen's recorded deeds. 
There was a real Baron von Miinchhausen (1720-1797) who fought 
with the Russians against the Turks. A grotesque history of the 
Baron's prowess was written by a certain Rudolf Raspe. a clever but 
rascally author, whose dishonesty suggested the character of the 
swindling German Dousterswivel in Scott's dehghtful novel The 
Antiquary. 

p. 36, 1.37. Captain ■. Captain James Burney, son of Johnson's 

old friend Dr Burney, and brother of Madame D'Arblay. He was 
a distinguished sailor who had served under Captain Cook. 

p. 36, 1. 38. Jem White. James White (1775-1820) was a 
schoolfellow of Lamb at Christ's Hospital, and is immortalised in 
Lamb's essay The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers. He wrote, possibly 
with the help of Lamb, a volume of what were alleged to be Original 
Letters, etc., of Sir John Falstaff and His Friends, now first made 
public by a Gentleman, a Descendant of Dame Quickly (T796). The 
best available account of this odd volume is Lamb's review of it reprinted 
in Vol. I of Lucas's edition of Lamb. 

p. 36, 1. 40. turning like the latter end, etc. A quotation from 
Falstaff 's Letters referred to above. It is from a letter supposed 
to be written to Justice Shallow by his servant Davy (for whom see 
King Henvy TV , Part II) : "Master Abram is dead, gone, your Worship, 
dead! Master Abram! Oh! good your Worship a's gone. A' never 
throve, since a' came from Windsor — -'twas his death. I called him 
rebel, your Worship — but a' was all subject — a' was subject to any 
babe, as much as a King — a' turned, like as it were the latter end of 
a lover's lute — a' was all peace and resignment — a' took delight in nothing 
but his Book of Songs and Sonnets — a' would go to the Stroud side under 
the large beech tree, and sing, till 'twas quite pity of our lives to mark 
him, etc." 

p. 37, I. I. A . William Ayrton (1777-1858), a musical friend 

of Lamb, director of the King's theatre in the Haymarket, where Don 
Giovanni had been produced in 1817. An amusing rimed epistle of 
Lamb to Ayrton asking for orders to see Don Giovanni is included in 
Lamb's letters. 



174 Notes 

p. 37, 1. 2. the Will Honeycomb. Will Honeycomb is a character 
described in the "Sir Roger de Coverley" essays of Steele and Addison. 
The set description of Will Honeycomb appears in Steele's essay called 
The Spectator Club: "But that our society may not appear a set 
of humorists, unacquainted with the gallantries and pleasures of the 
age, we have amongst us the gallant Will Honeycomb, a gentleman 
who, according to his years, should be in the decline of his life, but having 
been very careful of his person, and always had a very easy fortune, 
time has made but very little impression, either by wrinkles on his 
forehead, or traces on his brain. His person is well-turned, and of a 
good height. He is very ready at that sort of discourse with which 
men usually entertain women. He has all his life dressed very well, 
and remembers habits as others do men. He can smile when one speaks 
to him, and laughs easily. He knows the history of every mode..., In 
a word, all his conversation and knowledge has been in the female 
world." 

p. 37, I. 2. Mrs R . Mrs Reynolds, who had been Lamb's 

schoolmistress in his earhest days, and to whom in later life he paid, 
with characteristic generosity, an annuity of ;^30 or £-^2. 

p. 37, 1. 7. P . Peter George Patmore (1786-1855), father of 

Coventry Patmore the poet. 

p. 37, 1. 8, M.B. Martin Burney, one of Lamb's most attached 
friends, frequently mentioned in the letters. He was a son of Captain 
James Burney, 

p. 37. 1. 12. the author of ''The Road to Ruin." Holcroft, for 
whom see p. 156. 

P- 37> 1- 35- til© Biographia Literaria. Coleridge's desultory 
and unfinished autobiography, published in 1817. 

P- 37. 1- 37- An event. It is not immediately clear what Hazlitt 
means by this. Obviously something more is implied than a mere 
personal difference between him and Lamb, such as happened in 1814. 
The last paragraph of the essay called Of Persons One Would Wish to 
Have Seen (p. 59 of this volume) intimates that Hazhtt is referring 
to the downfall of Napoleon as the event that destroyed the friendly 
intercourse he has been describing. Hazhtt's intense sympathy with 
Napoleon is dealt with in the introduction and needs no further 
discussion here. The only difficulty in this explanation is one of 
chronology. Hazlitt is describing assemblies that took place in Mitre 
Court Buildings where Lamb lived from 1801 to 1809, Obviously the 
downfall of Napoleon in 1814-1815 could hardly break up a party 
that had already broken up in 1809. Hazlitt, however, is notoriously 
bad in matters of chronology, and it is plain that, writing several years 
later, he simply forgot how much time separated Mitre Court from 
Elba and Waterloo. See, too, the Advertisement to The Round Table, 
describing his association with Leigh Hunt, and their proposed joint 
contribution of essays to The Examiner : " Our plan had been no sooner 
arranged and entered upon, than Buonaparte landed at Fr4jus, et voild. 
la Table Ronde dessoiite. Our little congress was broken up as well 
as the great one." 

p. 37, 1. 40. Like angels' visits, etc. A blend of two quotations. 
The ultimate origin is The Grave by Robert Blair (i 699-1 746), a poem 



On the Conversation of Authors. II 175 

the best parts of which are those that do not immediately recall 
Hamlet and Gray's Elegy. The Grave is further commended to people 
of taste by the fact ithat Blake illustrated it with some striking 
designs. Thus writes Blair: 

the good he scorned 
Stalked ofiE reluctant, Uke an ill-used ghost. 
Not to return; or, if it did, its visits, 
like those of angels, short, and far between. 

Thomas Campbell (1777-1844), author of Ye Mariners of England, 
The Battle of the Baltic and Hohenlinden, consciously or unconsciously 
borrowed Blair's simile for a passage in The Pleasures of Hope : 
What though my winged hours of bhss have been 
Like angel-visits, few and far between ? 
Hazlitt pointed out the similarity, and added that, in altering Blair's 
line, Campbell had spoiled it, as "few" and "far between" are the 
same thing, whereas "short" and "far between" are not. 

p. 38, 1. 7. Mr Douce. Francis Douce (1757-1834) was a very 
eccentric antiquary who was, for a short time. Keeper of Manuscripts 
at the British Museum. He is best remembered by his Illustrations of 
Shakespeare (2 vols.), a valuable work. He affected a singularity of 
manner and costume, and seems to have been a "difficult" man to all 
but a few bibliomaniacs like himself. 

p. 38, 1. 9. L. H. Leigh Hunt (i 784-1859), the essayist and 
miscellaneous writer, friend of Lamb, Keats, Shelley and Byron, had 
a gay, light-hearted, companionable disposition; but it is necessary 
to remind ourselves that he also had courage enough to hold 
political opinions unpalatable to a corrupt court and to endure two 
years' imprisonment for asserting them. His father was a Barbadian, 
hence the allusion to tropical blood. Hazlitt's criticism is very sound. 
Leigh Hunt's work can scarcely be said to survive. It lacks character 
and personality. Hunt is described at full length in The Spirit of the 
Age. 

p. 38, 1. 18. aliquando sufJlaminandus erat. "He sometimes 
needed to be checked." Hazlitt no doubt got this phrase from Ben 
Jonson's Timber, or Discoveries made upon Men and Matters as they 
have flowed out of his Daily Readings or had their Reflux to his Peculiar 
Notions of the Times — z. collection of prose miscellanies, ranging from 
mere sentences to essays, first published posthumously in 1641. The 
phrase occurs in the section called De Shakespeare nostrati, where Ben, 
in terms now familiar, speaks of Shakespeare's never having blotted 
a line. " He was indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature, had 
an excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he 
flowed with that facility that sometime it was necessary he should be 
stopped. Sufflaminandus erat, as Augustus said of Haterius." This 
last allusion is to an anecdote related in Seneca's Excerpta Contro- 
versiarum, Bk iv. Proem, par. 7. 

p. 39, 1. 4. slubber over. A Shakespearean reminiscence. See 
The Merchant of Venice, Act 11, Sc. viii, 1. 39 : 

Slubber not business for my sake, Bassanio, 
But stay the very riping of the time. 
"To slubber" means "to slur over." Shakespeare uses it in the sense 



176 Notes 

of doing something carelessly, Hazlitt rather in the sense of concealing 
or disguising. 

p. 39, 1. 8. the Indicator. A periodical edited by Leigh Hunt 
from 1819 to 1821. His editorship ceased a little before the paper 
came to an end. Of the title Hunt himself says: "It is to be called 
the Indicator, after a bird of that name, who shows people where to 
find honey." 

p. 39, 1. 19. Mr Northcote, the painter. James Northcote (1746- 
183 1 ), a painter of some note in his day, was a pupil of Sir Joshua, 
and produced portraits and historical pictures; but he is remembered 
now almost solely for The Conversations of John Northcote, Esq. R.A. 
published by HazUtt in 1826 and 1827, six years after the date of the 
present essay. 

p. 39, 1. 29. His face is as a book. Macbeth, Act i, Sc. v, 1. 63 : 
Your face, my thane, is as a book where men 
May read strange matters. 

p. 40, 1. 2. the Catalogue Raisonn6. The Catalogue RaisonnS, 
of pictures exhibited at the British Institution, was vigorously criticised 
by Hazlitt in three essays, two of which are included in The Round 
Table. A catalogue raisonnS is a list compiled on systematic principles. 

p. 40, 1. II. I never ate or drank with Mr Northcote. Few 
people did. Northcote was very miserly and not given to hospitality 
that cost money. 

p. 40, 1. 16. he cannot write himself. He was, nevertheless, 
the author of certain fables and criticisms, together with Uves of 
Reynolds and Titian. 

p. 40, 1. 36. Montesquieu. A French nobleman (1689-1755) 
who criticised adversely the pohtical conditions of his time, and in his 
most famous work, De I'Esprit des Lois, discussed a free constitution 
on the Enghsh model. Montesquieu's work was one of the under- 
currents in the flood of the Revolution. Hazlitt is rather hard on 
Montesquieu, who long suffered from defective sight and died totally 
bUnd. That dictation is not incompatible with supreme Hterary art 
is triumphantly proved by the case of Milton. 

p. 40, 1. 39. Horne Tooke. John Home (1736-1812), who took 
his more familiar name from that of a rich benefactor, Mr Tooke of 
Purley, was a very prominent figure on the liberal side of Enghsh 
poUtics in the years of the French Revolution, when freedom of thought 
and speech were persecuted as offences. He suffered considerably 
for his opinions. His once famous work. The Diversions of Purley, 
a curious blend of grammar, literary criticism and poUtics, is now 
forgotten by most people. HazUtt gives a very interesting sketch of 
Horne Tooke in The Siiirit of the Age and a long account of The 
Diversions of Purley in a lecture pubUshed among his fugitive writings 
(Works, Vol. XI). 

p. 41, 1. 3. no one could relish a good style, etc. There is 
something in this assertion, as Hazlitt himself admits lower down. 
Charles Lamb is emphatic on the point: "Anything high may, nay, 
must, be read out; you read it to yourself with an imaginary auditor." 
(Letter to Wordsworth. 22 Jan. 1830.) The French novehst Flaubert, 
who aimed at perfection in his prose, attached special importance to 



On the Conversation of Authors. II 177 

an oral test of his work: "He had an excellent method which can be 
recommended to every writer; he read aloud what he had written, 
carefully listening for any break in the rhythm, any dull sounds, or 
any beating of the words against each other. Maupassant tells us that 
he took up his sheet of paper and raised it to his line of sight, then, 
leaning on his elbow, declaimed it in a slow incisive voice... conscien- 
tiously placing his commas like halts on a long road He himself said: 

'A phrase can only live when it corresponds to all the necessities of 
respiration. I know it to be good when it can be read aloud easily.'" 
(Flaubert, by Emile Faguet.) 

p. 41, 1. 7. hear a sound so fine. From Act v, So. ii, of the 

tragedy Virginius by James Sheridan Knowles (1784-1862): 
Is it a voice, or nothing, answers me? 
I hear a sound so iine, there's nothing lives 
Twixt it and silence. 

p. 41, 1. 17. classical centos. A cento is a sort of patchwork 
composition made by stringing together words and phrases borrowed 
from the works of different writers. An unoriginal person who tries 
to produce an elaborate composition usually manages to bring forth 
nothing but scraps from his remembered reading. A cento purposely 
made up may be very amusing. "Hamlet's Soliloquy" as rendered 
by the rascally barn-stormer in Huckleberry Finn is a deUghtful 
cento of Shakespearean quotations joined together with ludicrous 
inappropriateness. 

p. 41, 1. 35. a learned professor. Dr Samuel Parr (1747-1825), 
once famous as a Greek scholar, schoolmaster, and imitator of Dr 
Johnson's mighty conversational manner. De Quincey has a long 
essay on Parr. 

p. 41, 1. 39. Fuseli's fantastic hieroglyphics. Johann Heinrich 
Fuessli ( 1 742-1 825) was a Swiss of very eccentric habits who settled 
in London and became famous as a painter in the style of exaggerated 
sublimity then fashionable. He ItaUanised his name into the form 
now familiar. Many of his works were painted in illustration of 
Shakespeare and Milton, but, as in the case of Blake, with whom he 
has some affinity, his conceptions were beyond the power of his technique 
to express. His "fantastic hieroglyphics" may mean his illegible 
handwriting — a fault strangely common among famous artists; but 
possibly Hazlitt is using the word metaphorically for Fuseli's quaint 
forms of speech and his bad pronunciation. The excellent character 
of him given in the essay On the Old Age of Artists {The Plain Speaker) 
seems to indicate this. Fuseli was ambidextrous and could write as 
well (or ill) with one hand as with the other. "Hieroglyphics" were, 
strictly speaking, the sacred picture-writing of the ancient Egyptians, 
and so, writing that could be deciphered only by the learned and 
initiated. The word, by degradation, has now come to mean any 
oddly illegible handwriting. 

p. 41, 1. 40. Curran. John Philpot Curran (1750-1817), the 
famous Irish lawyer and poUtical orator. Curran, though a Protestant, 
was a strong opponent of the Cathohc disabihties, and, after the rebeUion 
of 1798, defended most eloquently the leaders who were tried for treason. 



178 Notes 

p. 42, 1. 8. Sheridan. Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), 
the famous Whig poUtician and orator, friend of Burke and Fox. 
He is, however, more generally remembered as the author of three 
immortal prose comedies. The Rivals, The Critic and The School for 
Scandal. 

p. 42, 1. 8. John Kemble. John PhiUp Kemble (1757-1823), 
a tragic actor in the grand style, the leading male figure on the EngUsh 
stage of his time till his classic fame was challenged by the new intense 
realism of Edmund Kean. Kemble was the brother of Mrs Siddons. 

p. 42, 1. 9. Mrs Inchbald. Elizabeth Inchbald, born Thompson 
(1753-1821), gained some fame as actress, play-writer and novehst. 

p. 42, 1. 10. from noon to dewy eve. Paradise Lost, 1, 743-4: 
Nor was his name unheard or unadored 
In ancient Greece ; and in Ausonian land 
Men called him Mulciber; and how he fell 
From Heaven they fabled, thrown by angry Jove 
Sheer o'er the crystal battlements : from morn 
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, 
A summer's day, and with the setting sun 
Dropt from the zenith, hke a falhng star. 
On Lemnos, the Aegaean isle. 

p. 42, 1. 14. a Table-talk. Hazhtt did not carry out this intention. 

p. 42, 1. 14. Peter Pindar. John Wolcot (1738-1819), a Devon- 
shire physician, who, after some time in Jamaica, practised his profession 
at Truro. In later years he came to London and wrote much in the 
form of topical and would-be humorous verse under the name Peter 
Pindar. His work was often very coarse and brutal in manner, and 
nothing of it can be said to survive, with the possible exception of a 
piece, occasionally met with in some collections, recording the curiosity 
of George III to know how apples got inside dumpHngs. 

p. 42, 1. 20. Mrs M . Mrs Montagu, third wife of Basil Montagu, 

who played a part of some importance in the life of Coleridge. Mrs 
Montagu, formerly Mrs Skepper, was a woman of fine character. She had 
known Burns, fascinated the celebrated preacher Edward Irving, who 
called her his "noble lady," and attracted Carlyle, who wrote many 
letters to her. 

p. 42, 1. 22. H — t's, etc. H — t is Hunt, N, Northcote and H, 
Hay don. 

p. 42, 1. 36. Tronchin. Theodore Troncliin ( 1 709-81 ), a physician 
of Geneva, at first the friend and afterwards the enemy of Rousseau. 
The reference is no doubt to Bk xii of The Confessions; but it is 
not Tronchin who utters the words. "A certain village mayor, who 
had been dismissed for malversation, remarked to the lieutenant of 
the Val de Travers...'It is said that this Rousseau has plenty of wit; 
bring him to me, that 1 may see if it is true'." 

p. 43, 1. 4. Sir Fopling Flutter. A character in The Man of 
Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter, a comedy by "the gay Sir George 
Etherege" (i634?-i69i) who had lived in France, and imported into 
England the spirit of Fi-ench comedy as embodied in the work of his 
great contemporary Molidre. Etherege may be called the father of English 



On the Conversation of Authors. II 179 

prose comedy, as he represents the first real departure from the formal 
verse drama of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period. He wrote 
two other plays, The Comical Revenge, or Love in a Tub, and She 
would if she could. The sentiment about tennis attributed to Sir 
Fopling Flutter is not to be found in the play. The only allusion 
to the game is the following. Sir Fopling, a foolish and vainglorious 
beau, has been boasting of his success with the ladies, and this con- 
versation ensues : 

Medley. For all this smattering of the mathematics you may be 
out in your judgment at tennis. 

Fopling. What a coq-d,4'dne is this ! I talk of women, and thou 
answerest tennis. 

p. 43, 1. 6. For wit is like a rest, etc. From Francis Beaumont's 
Letter to Ben Jonson, written before he and Mr Fletcher came to London, 
with two of the precedent comedies then not finished, which deferred their 
merry meetings at the Mermaid : 

Methinks the little wit I had is lost 

Since I saw you, for wit is like a rest 

Held up at tennis, which men do the best 

With the best gamesters : what things have we seen 

Done at the Mermaid ! 

p. 43, 1. 15. L once came down. The Lambs visited the 

HazUtts at Winterslow in the summer of 1810. Lamb's visit to Oxford 
resulted in the essay Oxford in the Vacation. See further the essay 
On going a Journey (p. 149) and the notes thereto. 

p. 43, 1. 16. like the most capricious poet, etc. As You Like It, 
Act III, Sc. iii, 1. 8 : "I am here with thee and thy goats as the most 
capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths." Ovid, the 
famous Latin poet, was banished to the shores of the Black Sea. In 
Shakespeare's time "goats" and "Goths" were pronounced almost 
alike, the pun (if it may be so called) being emphasised by the fact 
that "capricious" is derived from the Latin word for "goat." 

p. 43, 1. 22. walked gowned. From Lamb's sonnet. Written 
at Cambridge, Aug. 15, 1819": 

I was not trained in Academic bowers, 

****** 
Yet can I fancy, wandering 'mid thy towers. 
Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap; 
My brow seems tightening with the Doctor's cap. 
And I walk gowned, 
p. 44, 1. 16. one such instance. This must be George Dyer, 
immortalised in many passages of Lamb's essays and letters. See 
especially Oxford in the Vacation and Amicus Redivivus among the 
Eha essays. 

p. 44, 1. 31. The legend of good women. Chaucer planned 
a long poem to embody twenty famous instances of women faithful 
in love. The poem as we have it contains only nine of the promised 
twenty. 

p. 44, 1. 35. camera obscura. Literally "a dark room." The 
"camera obscura" was a sort of optical show. A large lens, fitted 



i8o Notes 

into one of the walls of a dark room, focussed an image which was 
then reflected on a table or screen in the room, so that those within 
saw a picture in little of what was happening without. The picture 
was like that seen on the focussing screen of a photographic camera, 
but of course on a vastly greater scale — and the right way up. 

p. 44, 1. 39. dog Tray. An allusion to the Irish Harper, a poem 
by Campbell describing the affection of a poor Irish beggar for his 
faithful true-hearted dog. The sentiment of the piece is much better 
than the verse. 



OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN 

First pubUshed in The New Monthly Magazine, January, 1826. 
Reprinted in Literary Remains and Winterslow. This essay, like the 
second On the Conversation of Atithors, seeks to reproduce the wit 
and wisdom of the Lamb circle. The subject is mentioned in the last 
essay as the theme of an evening's talk at Mitre Court Buildings. 

B stands for Lamb throughout the whole piece. Most of the other 

speakers hav» been identified in the preceding essay, to the notes on 
which the reader may be generally referred. 

p. 46, 1. I. Gome like shadows. Macbeth, Act iv. Sc. i, iio-iii : 
Show his eyes and grieve his heart; 
Come like shadows, so depart! 

p. 46, 1. 3. Guy Faux. Hazhtt defended Guy Fawkes in three 
essays published in The Examiner during November 1821. As a matter 
of fact Lamb had touched upon the topic in an essay written ten years 
earher and entitled On the Probable Effects of the Gunpowder Treason 
in this Country if the Conspirators had accomplished their Object. 
In 1823 Lamb returned to the subject and contributed to The London 
Magazine a long essay on Guy Fawkes in which he incorporates most 
of his earlier article and refers humorously to Hazlitt's three papers — 
Hazhtt himself being preposterously described as an ex-Jesuit, not 
unknown at Douay ! 

p. 46, 1. 7. Never so sure, etc. Pope, Moral Essays: Ep. II 
to a Lady, Of the Character of Women, 51-52: 

Strange graces still, and stranger flights she had. 
Was just not ugly, and was just not mad; 
Yet ne'er so sure our passion to create. 
As when she touched the brink of all we hate. 

p. 46, 1. 17. A— — . Ayrton. See p. 173. 

p. 46, 1. 19. Sir Isaac Newton. The greatest of Enghsh natural 
philosophers (1642-1727), discoverer of many principles upon which 
physical investigation is still based. His views on universal gravitation 
and other astronomical phenomena were published in Philosophiae 
Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), generally known briefly as 
"Principia." 

p. 46, 1. 20. Locke. John Locke (1632-1704), one of the chief 
English philosophical writers, was the author of An Essay concerning 
Human Understanding (1690), Thoughts on Education (1693), Of the 
Conduct of the Understanding and many minor works. The writings 



Of Persons one would wish to have seen i8i 

of Locke were very influential both in England and on the Continent. 
Rousseau represents a point of abrupt departure from Locke both in 
educational theory and in poUtical philosophy. A very long and severely 
critical discussion of Locke in general, and a shorter paper on Locke 
as a Plagiarist, are included among Hazlitt's fugitive writings [Works, 
Vol. XI). 

p. 47, 1. 13. in his habit as he lived. Hamlet, Act in, Sc. iv, 1. 135. 
p. 47, 1. 15. Fulke Greville. Lord Brooke (1554-1628) was 
the author of two strange tragedies, Alaham and Mustapha, 
a collection of rather angular and sometimes beautiful poems called 
Caelica, and a very characteristic life of his friend and schoolfellow 
Sir Philip Sidney. There is a curiously attractive quality in Lord 
Brooke's work, quaint and uncouth as much of it appears. 
p. 47, 1. 37. And call up him. II Penseroso, T09-115: 

Or call up him that left half-told 

The story of Cambuscan bold, 

Of Camball, and of Algarsife, 

And who had Canace to wife. 

That own'd the virtuous ring and glass. 

And of the wondrous horse of brass 

On which the Tartar king did ride. 
The allusion is to Chaucer's unfinished Squire's Tale. 

p. 48, 1. 6. wished that mankind, etc. "The whole World 
was made for man, but the twelfth part of man for woman : Man is 
the whole World and the Breath of God ; Woman the Rib and crooked 
piece of man. I could be content that we might procreate like trees, 
without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the 
World without this trivial and vulgar way of union." {Religio Medici, 
Part II, Sect, ix.) 

p. 48, 1. 8. old king of Ormus. Lamb quoted from Alaham 
and Mustapha in his Specimens of the English Dramatic Poets. His 
introductory notes will explain the allusion in the text: "Alaham, 
second Son to the King of Ormus, deposes his Father: whose Eyes, 
and the Eyes of his elder Brother Zophi (acting upon a maxim of 
Oriental Policy) he causes to be put out.... A Nuntius relates to Alaham 
the manner of his Father's Brother's and Sister's deaths; and the 
popular discontents which followed. Alaham by the sudden working 
of Remorse is distracted, and imagines he sees their Ghosts." Hazlitt's 
representation of Lamb's talk on this subject may be compared with 
the final passage of Lamb's concluding note in Specimens: "The 
finest movements of the human heart, the utmost grandeur of which 
the soul is capable, are essentially comprised in the actions and speeches 
of Caelica and Camena. Shakespeare, who seems to have had a peculiar 
delight in contemplating womanly perfection, whom for his many 
sweet images of female excellence all women in an especial manner 
are bound to love, has not raised the ideal of the female character 
higher than Lord Brooke in these two women has done. But it requires 
a study equivalent to the learning of a new language to understand 
their meaning when they speak. It is indeed hard to hit : 
Much like thy riddle, Samson, in one day 
Or seven though one should musing sit. 



i82 Notes 

It is as if a being of pure intellect should take upon him to express 
the emotions of our sensitive natures. There would be all knowledge, 
but sympathetic expression would be wanting." 

p. 48, 1. 9. apocalyptical, cabalistical. "Apocalyptical," full 
of high mysticism and similitude, like the Apocalypse, or Revelation 
of St John the Divine. "Cabalistical," derived from "Cabbala," the 
secret interpretation of the Jewish scriptures by rabbis instructed 
in the hidden meanings handed down by tradition, signifies anything 
with a secret meaning known only to the initiated. 

p. 48, 1. 17. Dr Donne. The old edition referred to is that of 1669. 
The lines beginning "Here lies a She-Sun" are from his Epithalamion 
on the Lady Elizabeth and the Count Palatine— the Lady Elizabeth being 
the daughter of James I, married to the Elector Palatine, the choice of 
whom as King of Bohemia precipitated the Thirty Years' War. The 
same princess is celebrated in Sir Henry Wotton's familiar lines begin- 
ning "Ye meaner beauties of the night." The Elegy to his Mistress 
is quoted in full. 

p. 49, 1. 13. wild Boreas' harshness. Boreas, the North Wind, 
carried off Orithyia, daughter of Erechtheus, King of Attica, and had 
as sons, Zetes and Calais, the winged brothers who delivered King 
Phineus of Salmydessa from the Harpies. 

p. 49, 1. 26. Spittles. Hospitals — here used figuratively. 

p. 49, 1. 44. the Temple-walk. The connection of Chaucer with 
the Temple is very doubtful. The tradition derives from an uncorrobo- 
rated anecdote related in the life of Chaucer contained in the folio 
edition of 1602. 

p. 49, 1. 47. ruggedness of the metre. That the verse of 
Chaucer was rough and inharmonious was a superstition of the "polite 
and courtly" age of English Hterature. Thus Dryden, who published 
in 1700 some versions of Homer, Ovid and Boccaccio, included transla- 
tions of Chaucer as if that most English of poets were a foreign writer. 
"The verse of Chaucer," says Dryden, "is not harmonious to us... they 
who lived with him, and some time after, thought it musical;... there 
is the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune in it, which is natural and 
pleasing, though not perfect." And he goes on to assert that many 
of Chaucer's lines are "lame for want of half a foot." The simple 
fact is that Dryden and his contemporaries could not read Chaucer 
correctly. The final "e," so often sounded in Chaucer's verse, was 
treated as a mute, with the effect of clippmg many a line half a foot 
or more short. That Chaucer, who was an English Court official 
twice employed on foreign diplomatic missions, who had eagerly 
studied the language and hterature of France and Italy and had perhaps 
discussed poetry with Petrarch, was a sort of peasant poet incapable 
of rhythm is altogether too absurd a proposition. In reality, Chaucer's 
verse is much more smooth and harmonious than that of many later 
poets. Here, for instance, are the opening lines of the Knight's 



Tale: 



Whilom, as olde stories tellen us 

Ther was a due that highte Thesgus; 

Of Atthenes he was lord and governour. 

And in his tym6 swich a conquerour 

That gretter was ther noon under the sonne. 



Of persons one would wish to have seen 183 

This is Dryden's version : 

In days of old, there lived, of mighty fame 

A valiant Prince, and Theseus was his name; 

A chief who more in feats of arms excelled 

The rising nor the setting sun beheld. 
It can scarcely be claimed that Dryden has the advantage in smoothness 
or harmony. However, Dryden had a manly admiration for Chaucer's 
humour and humanity, and his "translations" certainly contributed 
to maintain an interest in the older poet. The opinion of Ayrton 
(half assented to by Hazlitt) is therefore no more than an echo of the 
patronising and incorrect sentiments about Chaucer that prevailed 
in the elegant seventeen-hundreds. 

p. 50, 1. 9. lisped in numbers. Pope's Prologue to the Satires^, 
Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot : 1. 128 : 

Why did I write? what sin to me unknown 
Dipped me in ink, my parents', or my own? 
As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, 
I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came. 

p. 50, 1. 17. Mine Host of Tabard. Chaucer's Canterbury 
Pilgrims assembled at the Tabard Inn in the Borough, to the south of 
London Bridge. The Host is described by Chaucer as : 

Boold of his speche, and wys and well y-taught, 
And of manhod hym lakkede right naught. 
Eek therto he was right a myrie man. 
And after soper pleyen he bigan. 
And spak of myrthe amonges othere thynges. 
Whan that we hadde maad our rekenynges. 
It is the Host who suggests the telling of tales on the journey. 

p. 50, 1. 17. His intervie^v with Petrarch. Francesco Petrarca 
(1304-1374), the great Italian poet, famous especially for his love 
sonnets, was greatly admired throughout France and Italy both for 
his own work and for his keen interest in all literary studies. 
Chaucer (i 340-1 400), who was in the royal service during the reigns 
of Edward III, Richard II and Henry IV, was in Italy on official 
biisiness during several months of 1372 and 1373, and again in 1378- 
1379. He became familiar with the Italian language and its current 
literature, and being himself a poet, would no doubt endeavour to seek 
an interview with the admired Petrarch, who, in 1373, was at Arqua, 
near Padua, engaged in adapting from Boccaccio the story of Griselda, 
which Chaucer borrowed for the Clerk of Oxenford's tale. Thus, 
though there is no direct evidence that the English and Italian poets 
ever met, the probability is very strong. The words put by Chaucer 
in the mouth of the Oxford scholar strongly support the supposition : 
T wol you tell a tale which that I 
Lerned in Padwe of a worthy clerk, 
As preved by his wordes and his werk... 
Fraunceys Petrak, the lauriat poete 
Highte this clerk whos rhetorike sweete 
Enlumyned all Ytaille of poetrie. 

p. 50, 1. 19. the author of the Decameron. Giovanni Boccaccio 



i84 Notes 

(1313-1375), next to Dante the greatest of Italian writers, famous for 
his stories in prose and verse, and above all for the Decamerone, a 
collection of tales supposed to be told in turn by ten ladies and gentlemen 
who have retreated to a secluded villa to escape the plague which 
ravaged Florence in 1348. Each person tells ten stories, and ten days 
are taken in the telling; hence the name "Decamerone," which means 
"The Ten Days." The stories of the Decameron (the name is usually 
thus shorn of a syllable in English) have been the source of many plays, 
poems and narratives in many languages ever since its composition. 
Chaucer borrowed nothing from the Decameron, and perhaps did not 
know more of that collection than the general idea, which he may 
have had in mind when he planned The Canterbury Tales. The marked 
likeness of The Reeve's Tale to Novel vi of the Ninth Day is due 
to a common origin rather than to any direct borrowing. However, 
from Boccaccio's other works Chaucer took materials for Anelida 
and Arcyte, Troilus and Cressida, The Parlement of Foules, The 
Legend of Good Women and The Monk's Tale. Hazlitt's desire to 
hear Chaucer and Boccaccio exchange stories was just possible of 
accomplishment, for Chaucer was in Italy during 1372 -1373 and 
Boccaccio died in 1375; but it is highly improbable that they ever 
met. The other allusions can be briefly dismissed. The Squire's 
Tale is "the Story of Cambuscan bold" referred to in a previous note. 
The Wife of Bath is a much married lady who defends her matrimonial 
adventures in the prologue to the story she tells. Boccaccio's tale of 
the Hawk (Novel ix of the Fifth Day), a favourite with Hazlitt, and 
often referred to by him, will probably be best known to English readers 
from Tennyson's play The Falcon or Longfellow's "Falcon of Ser 
Federigo " in Tales of a Wayside Inn. The adventures of Friar Albert, 
who put on angel's wings to deceive an absurdly vain woman, are related 
in Novel 11 of the Fourth Day. 

p. 50, 1. 27. Cadinuses. Cadmus, a traditional hero of Greek 
legend, wandering to find his sister Europa, was told by an oracle to 
follow a certain cow and found a city where she should sink down with 
fatigue. When the beast had collapsed, Cadmus resolved to offer her 
as a sacrifice to Athene, and sent his companions to a neighbouring 
stream to find water. Here they were slain by a dragon, the offspring 
of Ares (Mars) the god of war. After a great struggle Cadmus killed 
the dragon, and, as directed by Athene, sowed its teeth over the 
ground. Armed men at once sprang up, and fought each other, leaving 
only five survivors. These five, with Cadmus, built the stronghold 
which developed into the famous city of Thebes. 

p. 50, 1. 30. Dante. Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), the greatest 
of Italian writers and one of the world's supreme poets, is specially 
famous for his Divina Commedia, or Vision of Hell, Purgatory and 
Paradise. His "lineaments" are, in fact, among the most familiar 
in the world ; for a cast of his face was taken after death, and a record 
of the strong, haughty, ascetic features of the poet have thus been 
authentically transmitted through the ages. Other portraits, one by 
Giotto his contemporary, confirm the evidence of the death-mask. 

The dreadful story of Ugolino is told in Cantos xxxii and xxxiii 
of the Inferno. Count Ugolino, a desperate and ambitious man 
who aspired to rule in Pisa, was accused by another competitor for 
power, the Archbishop Ruggieri, of betraying Pisa to the Florentines, 



Of persons one would wish to have seen 185 

The infuriated Pisans attacked Ugolino in his palace, and cast him, 
with two sons and grandsons, into prison. After some months, the 
tower was locked up, the key was cast into the Arno, and the wretched 
prisoners were left to perish of hunger and thirst in the Tower of Famine, 
as it was afterwards called. Chaucer has adapted Dante's story of 
Ugolino in a passage of the Monk's tale. 

p. 50, 1. 34. fine portrait of Ariosto. Ludovico Ariosto (1474- 
1533), the Italian poet, famous for his epic Orlando Furioso, relating 
the adventures of Roland the great paladin of Charlemagne. "Titian's 
portrait of Ariosto," to which Hazlitt refers, is now in the National 
Gallery. It is almost certainly not a portrait of Ariosto, and very 
possibly not by Titian. Why Hazlitt calls it "Moorish" is difficult 
to say — unless the luxuriant brown hair and beard of the sitter suggested 
the epithet. 

p. 50, 1. 36. Peter Aretine. Pietro Aretino (1492-1557) was an 
Italian writer of light poems and comedies. He died, very appropriately, 
of laughing — so at least tradition says. A paroxysm of merriment 
caused him to fall from his chair, and he was instantly killed. Titian's 
portrait of Aretino is in the Pitti Gallery at Florence. 

p. 50, 1. 38. the mighty dead. Thomson, The Seasons: Winter, 
1. 432: 

Where ruddy fire and beammg tapers join 
To cheer the gloom, there studious let me sit 
And hold high converse with the mighty Dead. 

p. 51, 1. 8. a creature of the element. Camus, 299-301 : 
Their port was more than human as they stood; 
I took it for a faery vision 
Of some gay creatures of the element 
That in the colours of the rainbow live. 
And play i' the plighted clouds. 

p. 51, 1. 14. That was Arion. Faerie Queene, Bk iv, Canto xi, 
Stanzas xxiii and xxiv: 

Then was there heard a most celestiall sound 
Of dainty musicke, which did next ensew 
Before the spouse: that was Arion crownd; 
Who, playing on his harpe, unto him drew 
The eares and hearts of all that goodly crew, 
That even yet the Dolphin, which him bore 
Through the Aegaean seas from Pirates vew. 
Stood still by him astonisht at his lore. 
And all the raging seas for joy forgot to rore. 

So went he playing on the watery plaine, etc. 
Arion, according to the legend, was a celebrated bard who went from 
Corinth to Sicily to take part in a contest of song. As he was returning 
laden with prizes and gifts, the sailors resolved to murder him for the 
spoil. Arion sang to his harp, and the dolphins, charmed by the sound, 
gathered round the vessel; whereupon Arion cast himself into the 
sea and was carried safe to shore on the back of a friendly fish. 

p. 51, 1. 17. the Wandering Jew. The Wandering Jew, in 
medieval legend, was a man condemned by Jesus to wander without 



i86 Notes 

rest through the world until the Saviour should come again. According 
to one story the Wandering Jew is Khartaphilos the doorkeeper of 
Pilate's palace. As Jesus was being dragged to crucifixion, Khartaphilos 
struck him, saying "Go more quickly!" Jesus replied, "1 go, but 
thou shalt tarry in the world without peace or rest until I come again." 
Another legend makes a cobbler, Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew. 
The Saviour, stumbling under the weight of the cross, stayed to rest 
by the cobbler's door; but Ahasuerus spurned him away sajdng "You 
shall not rest here"; to which Jesus replied "Neither shalt thou rest 
again until I return." In other stories the Wandering Jew appears 
under various names — Salathiel ben Sadi, Isaac Laquedem (or Lakedion), 
Johannes Buttadaeus, etc. The Flying Dutchman is another example 
of this perpetual expiatory wandering, and yet another is Kundry in 
Wagner's so-called religious opera Parsifal. 

p. 51, 1. 19. Miss D . Mrs Eeynolds, for whom see p. 174. 

p. 51, 1. 20. Patty Blount. Martha Blount (1690-1762) ,is 
romantically connected with the hfe of Pope. She was the daughter 
of a Roman Catholic gentleman living at Mapledurham. Pope became 
acquainted with her in early life, and when her father's death led to 
a change of fortunes and consequent family quarrels. Pope took her 
under his protection. She was then living at Petersham just opposite 
Twickenham, across the Thames, where Pope had his villa. Pope 
seems to have been greatly attached to her. He defended her in all her 
quarrels and left her much of his property. 

p. 51, 1. 23. Dr Johnson in the years 1745-6. The suggestion 
is that Dr Johnson was out in the '45, with other Tory adherents of 
the Jacobite cause, and that he wrote the Young Pretender's Pro- 
clamation ! Such a suggestion m.ust of course not be taken seriously. 
Johnson certainly professed Jacobitism in a good-humoured and 
exaggerated way; but his devotion was so far unreal that he made 
no scruples about accepting a pension from the Hanoverian king. 
As to his occupation during the years 1 745-1 746, Boswell says: "It is 
somewhat curious that his literary career appears to have been almost 
totally suspended in the years 1745 and 1746, those years which were 
marked by a civil war in Great Britain, when a rash attempt was made 
to restore the House of Stuart to the throne. That he had a tenderness 
for that unfortunate House, is well known; and some may fancifully 
imagine that a sympathetic anxiety impeded the exertion of his 
intellectual powers: but I am inclined to think that he was, during 
this time, sketching the outlines of his great philological work." To 
which we may add that a time of war at home is not one in which such 
miscellaneous writings as Johnson was contributing to The Gentleman' s 
Magazine about this date can be profitably produced or published. 
A reference to volumes of the Magazine for 1744-46 will show how much 
the Civil War had lessened the opportunities of the general contributor. 
Johnson's undoubted visit to Scotland, as recorded in the Journey to 
the Western Islands, took place much later, in 1773. 

p. 51, 1. 28. with lack-lustre eye. As You Like It, Act 11, 
Sc. vii, 1. 21 : 

And then he drew a dial from his poke, 
And looking on it with lack-lustre eye. 
Says very wisely, "It is ten o'clock." 



Of persons one would wish to have seen 187 

P- 51. 1- 37- *li6 Lake School. The term formerly applied to 
Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey, because of their connection by 

residence with the Lake district. B , i.e. Lamb, though a keen 

and discriminating admirer of his Lake friends, was in no possible 
sense of the term himself connected with the Lake school. By birth, 
residence, sympathy and passionate attachment, Charles Lamb is the 
complete Londoner. 

p. 52, 1. 8. Despise low joys, etc. This passage and the next 
are taken from Pope's Imitations of Horace, The Sixth Epistle of 
the First Book, to Mr Murray — i.e. William Murray (i 705-1 793), the 
famous lawyer, successively Solicitor-General, Attorney-General, Chief 
Justice of the King's Bench and Earl of Mansfield, famous in a rather 
venal age for the strict impartiality of his decisions, and therefore 
unpopular with court and mob ahke. " Junius " attacked him in 
four of the famous Letters and the Gordon rioters burned his house. 
Pope's panegyric belongs to 1741 when Murray was on the threshold of 
his career. Lord Cornbury, referred to in the first passage, was a 
great-grandson of the famous Earl of Clarendon (the "Hyde" of the 
second quotation). Cornbury {1710-1753) was universally admired 
for his pleasant talents and his amiable character. Bolingbroke 
addressed to him his Letters on History, and even the censorious 
Horace Walpole speaks of him with enthusiasm and calls him "an 
exceedingly honest man." Tully, in the next quotation, is Marcus 
Tullius Cicero, the great Roman orator. 

p. 52, 1. 20. Lord Bolingbroke. Henry St John, Viscount 
Bolingbroke, the brilliant statesman and orator of Queen Anne's reign, 
to whom Pope addressed his Essay on Man, which is itself an em- 
bodiment of Bolingbroke's shallow philosophy. 

p. 52, 1. 21. Why rail they...? Pope, Epilogue to the Satires, 
Dialogue 11, 138-139. 

p. 52, 1. 25. But why then publish...? Pope, Prologue to the 
Satires, Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot, 135-146. Arbuthnot (1675-1735), 
doctor, wit, scholar and writer, is famous for his friendship with Swift, 
Bolingbroke and other great men, as well as for his satire The History 
of Jo/iri Bull, in which the familiar personification of England makes 
his first appearance. "Granville the Polite" is George Granville 
(1667-1735), afterwards Lord Lansdowne, who was in his youth a 
poet of good intentions and slight performance. "Knowing Walsh" 
was a critic whom Dryden called the best of his age. "Well-natured 
Garth" is Sir Samuel Garth (1661-1718), a distinguished physician, 
author of The Dispensary, a satirical poem against rapacious doctors. 
"If ever there was a good Christian without knowing himself to be so, 
it was Dr Garth" — thus Pope in a later tribute to his friend. Garth 
deserves special acknowledgment as the man who secured honourable 
sepulture in Westminster Abbey for the great Dryden, who, at the time 
of his death, had fallen (like Milton) upon evil days and evil tongues. 
Congreve (1669-1728) is the famous dramatist. "Courtly Talbot" 
was the Duke of Shrewsbuiy (1660-1718) who held many high offices 
in Queen Anne's reign, and made the coup d'etat which defeated the 
Tory- Jacobite plots at the time of that monarch's celebrated and 
unexpected death. Somers is the great Whig statesman (1652-1716) 
who helped to bring about the Revolution of 1688. Sheffield is the 



i88 Notes 

Duke of Buckinghamshire (1649-1722), statesman, and author of 
an Essay on Poetry. "Mitred Rochester" is Francis Atterbury 
(1663-1732), Bishop of Rochester, a keen Tory and avowed Jacobite 
who was arrested at the death of Queen Anne and sentenced to perpetual 
banishment. Burnet is Gilbert Burnet (1643-1715), the Whig Bishop 
of Salisbury, author of the History of My Own Times. Oldmixon is 
John Oldmixon (1673-1742), a bad critic and worse historian, pilloried 
by Pope in The Dunciad. Thomas Cooke (1703-56), another hack- 
writer, translated Hesiod, but owes his immortality to Pope's contempt. 
In the quoted lines Pope is referring to the kind reception accorded 
by all the best judges to his early poems. 

p. 53, 1. 15. Gay's verses. Epistle VI, To Mr Pope on his 
having finished his translation of Homer's Iliad. An assembly of 
notable English writers greets the poet after his supposed long sojourn 
in Greece. The piece is interesting as literary history, but possesses 
no merit as poetry. 

p. 53, 1. 21. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. The brilliant and 
witty daughter (1689-1762) of the Duke of K:ingston. She married 
Edward Wortley Montagu and accompanied him when he was appointed 
ambassador at Constantinople, whence she wrote the Letters upon 
which her fame depends. She had been on friendly terms with Addison, 
Pope and other literary notables of the day. Pope was her neighbour 
at Twickenham, but they quarrelled very soon. Lady Mary was the 
first to introduce into England the practice of inoculation for small-pox. 

p. 53, 1. 22. E . Probably Edward Phillips referred to on p. 172. 

p. 53, 1. 28. Richardson. Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) was 
a little printer who at fifty turned novelist almost by accident, and wrote 
Pamela. His next work Clarissa, a long and quietly tragic tale, told 
(like Pamela) in a series of letters, is one of the masterpieces of English 
fiction. His third novel. Sir Charles Grandison, is longer, but less 
readable. The immediate success of Richardson was enormous, and 
his influence on the European literature of his day quite remarkable. 
His work, sentimental, yet sincere, struck a new note, which so echoed 
in the hearts of his readers, that reams of letters were sent to the prim 
little author by love-sick persons who regarded him as an oracle of 
wisdom in all that concerned the passions. Fielding's Joseph Andrews 
was written, or at least begun, with the intention of ridiculing the very 
politic honesty of Pamela. Hence the allusion in the text. 

p. 54, 1. I. one enthusiast. In older times, "enthusiast" meant 
"visionary" or "fanatic." The polite eighteenth century used it 
frankly as a term of reproach. Hazlitt applies it to Bunyan in its sense 
of "visionary," but with admiration. "Dreams would follow him" 
because The Pilgrim's Progress, hke many other great pieces, is narrated 
as a dream. 

p. 54, 1. 4. nigh-sphered in heaven. Collins, Ode on the 
Poetical Character: 

I view that oak, the fancied glades among, 
By which, as Milton lay, his evening ear. 
From many a cloud that dropped ethereal dew 
Nigh sphered in Heaven its native strains could hear. 



Of persons one would wish to have seen 189 

p. 54, 1. 5. as any in Homer. Perhaps the clouds that canopied 
Olympus, the abode of the gods. 

p. 54, 1. 6. Garrick's name. David Garrick (1717-1779), the 
most famous of Enghsh actors, was born at Hereford, but was educated 
at Liclifield, where he made tl^e acquaintance of his Ufe-long friend, 
Dr Johnson. His first London success was gained at an outlying 
theatre in the east of London, but he soon moved to Covent Garden 
and Drury Lane, at the latter of which he settled as joint manager. 
Garrick wrote many pieces for the theatre, none of which have any 
permanent interest. Among the adaptations which he made or 
countenanced may be mentioned the transformation of Wycherley's 
Country Wife into the Country Girl, and the most reprehensible altera- 
tion of King Lear into a play with an alleged "happy" ending. See 
Lamb's admirable essaj^ On the Tragedies of Shakespeare for a sternly 
critical view of the liberties taken by Garrick with the text of Shake- 
speare. Boswell's Life of Johnson naturally contains many allusions to 
Garrick. The great Doctor paid a magnificent posthumous compU- 
ment to the actor in the Lives of the English Poets (life of Edward 
Smith). Referring to Gilbert Walmsley, who had supphed him with 
facts about Smith, Johnson says: "At this man's table I enjoyed many 
cheerful and instructive hours, with companions such as are not often 
found; with one who has lengthened and one who has gladdened life; 
with Dr James, whose skill in physic will be long remembered ; and with 
David Garrick, whom 1 hoped to have gratified with this character of 
our common friend : but what are the hopes of man ! I am dis- 
appointed by that stroke of death, which has eclipsed the gaiety of 
nations and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure." 
Goldsmith's mock epitaph in Retaliation hits off very admirably the 
excellence and the failings of the great actor: 

Here lies David Garrick, describe me who can, 
An abridgement of all that was pleasant in man; 
As an actor, confessed without rival to shine: 
As a wit, if not first, in the very first line: 
Yet, with talents like these, and an excellent heart, 
The man had his failings, a dupe to his art. 
Like an ill-judging beauty, his colours he spread. 
And beplastered with rouge his own natural red. 
On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting, 
'Twas only that when he was ofE he was acting. 

******** 
Of praise a mere glutton, he swallowed what came. 
And the puff of a dunce, he mistook it for fame; 
Till his relish grown callous, almost to disease, 
Who peppered the highest was surest to please.... 
The delightful account of Partridge at the play in Fielding's Tom 
Jones is a description of Garrick's performance as Hamlet. 

p. 54, 1. 8. J. F. Barron Field (1786-1846), a friend of Lamb, 
and, for a time, a Judge in ISew South Wales, where, in 18 17, he was 
the recipient of a characteristic letter from Lamb, developed later into 
the Eha essay entitled Distant Correspondents. Field wrote certain 
verse published as The First Fruits of Australian Poetry, a volume 
of no great merit, yet specially interesting as the first book printed 



igo Notes 

and published in Australia. Lamb's review of it is included in his 
miscellaneous pieces. 

p. 54, 1. 8. Handel. Georg Friedrich Handel, Anglicised into 
George Frederick Handel (1685-1759), the great musician, was born 
at Halle in Saxony, but was naturalised in 1726, and is so far English 
in spirit as to have become almost a national institution. He wrote 
many successful Italian operas and chamber pieces, but is most famous 
for the great series of sacred oratorios written to English words. It is 
a striking circumstance that many passages from the writings of the 
blind poet Milton were set to music by a composer who was himself, in 
later years, almost completely blind, the coincidence being pathetically 
complete in the case of Samson, in which the affecting tenor solo 
"Total Echpse" is a lament for loss of sight. Handel was one of the 
few musicians whom Lamb's limited ear could appreciate. 

p. 54, 1. II. Wildair. Sir Harry Wildair is a gay, profligate, 
yet good-hearted character in The Constant Couple, a comedy 
written by George Farquhar (1678-1707). The character proved so 
popular, that Farquhar wrote another play Sir Harry Wildair in 
which the dashing hero plays again the chief part. 

p. 54, 1. II. Abel Drugger. A rather soft and foolish seller of 
tobacco in Ben Jonson's excellent comedy The Alchemist. 

p. 54, 1. 15. what a troop, etc. Spranger Barry (1719-1777), born 
in Ireland, was gifted with a fine figure and a perfect voice. He was 
the rival of Garrick in such parts as Othello, Macbeth and Romeo. 
In parts requiring beauty of face, iigure and diction, Barry was held 
superior to Garrick; but Garrick beat him in parts that gave scope 
for intensity of genius and intellectual power. "Garrick, Madam, was 
no declaimer," said Johnson to Mrs Siddons; "there was not one of 
his own scene-schifters who could not have spoken To be, or not to be 
better than he did; yet he was the only actor I ever saw who could 
be called a master both in tragedy and comedy." James Quin (1693- 
1766) was the leading actor of the day till Garrick displaced him. 
He shone in such parts as Othello, Macbeth and Falstaff ; his greatest 
impersonations being Brutus in Julius Caesar and Cato in Addison's 
tragedy. Edward Shuter (1728-1776) was called by Garrick the greatest 
comic genius he had ever seen. He was famous in such parts as Falstaff, 
and the ist Grave-digger in Hamlet, but he acted chiefly in the prose 
comedies of Wycherley and his contemporaries. Thomas Weston 
(1737— 1776) was a genuine comedian who won the praise — rare in 
such cases — of never clowning and never " gagging." His Abel Drugger 
was thought by some finer than Garrick's. Kitty Clive (1711-1785) 
was a sprightly actress of comedy. "Clive, Sir," said Johnson, "is a 
good thing to sit by ; she always understands what you say." He added 
that in sprightliness of humour he had never seen her equalled. Hannah 
Pritchard (1711-1768) was specially great in such parts as Katherine 
and Lady Macbeth. She was an anticipation of Mrs Siddons in the 
grand manner. "Pritchard, in common life," said Johnson, "was 
a vulgar idiot; she would talk of her gownd; but, when she appeared 
on the stage, seemed to be inspired by gentihty and understanding." 

p. 54, 1. 28. a Bartlemy Fair actor. On St Bartholomew's 
day (Aug. 24) a great fair used to be held at Smithfield in London. 
There were, of course, many "shows," the usual accompaniment of 



Of persons one would wish to have seen igi 

a fair, and among them booths in which bad performances of bad 
plays were given by bad actors. So a Bartlemy Fair actor was what 
we should call a "barn-stormer." The Fair, an institution of London 
for over seven hundred years, was finally stopped in 1855. One of 
Ben Jonson's comedies is called Bartholomew Fair and gives a lively 
picture of London and the Fair in 1614. 

p. 54, 1. 28. to play Macbeth in a scarlet coat. In Garrick's 
time, and earlier, no attempt was made to give historical illusion in 
the matter of costume. The actors wore garments of the current date, 
and depended on their art for dramatic effect. In Zoffany's picture 
of Garrick and Mrs Pritchard in Macbeth the actor wears elaborate 
gold-laced and scarlet-faced garments of eighteenth century fashion. 
It may be urged that, if this state of things was rather undesirable, it is 
at least no worse than the modern method of smothering Shakespeare 
under elaborately correct scenery and accurate costumes and letting the 
arts of diction and interpretation take care of themselves. 

p. 54, 1. 32. histrionic asstus. Dramatic fire and energy. 

P- 55. 1- 5- Roscius. Quintus Roscius was an actor who flourished in 
Rome during the first century B.C. So excellent was he that his name has 
ever since been taken as the symbol of histrionic perfection. Roscius 
taught Cicero elocution and the orator defended the actor in one of 
his extant speeches. He was honoured by the dictator Sulla in a way 
that affords a kind of precedent for the modern custom of conferring 
titles upon distinguished actors. 

p. 55, 1. 13. the author of Mustapha. Lord Brooke. See p. 181. 

p. 55, 1. 15. Kit Marlowe. Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), 
Shakespeare's famous predecessor and exemplar, had a short and wild 
life. His plays include Tamburlaine the Great, The Tragical History 
of Dr Faustus, The Jew of Malta and Edward II. The last, the 
most satisfying of his dramas, served Shakespeare as a model for 
Richard II. Marlowe was stabbed in a drunken quarrel at a Deptford 
tavern. 

p. 55, 1. 16. the sexton of St Ann's. John Webster the dramatist 
was traditionally supposed to have been parish clerk at St Andrew's, 
Holborn. Of his several plays. The White Devil and The Duchess 
of Malfy {1623) are the best known. The dramatic apparatus of the 
latter includes a dead man's hand, a coffin with its cords, a tolling bell, 
madmen who dance and sing and waxen images anticipating the 
posture of death ! Charles Lamb's admiration for this play is expressed 
very finely in his Specimens. The Duchess, he says, "has lived among 
horrors till she is become ' native and endued unto that element.' She 
speaks the dialect of despair, her tongue has a smatch of Tartarus 
and the souls in bale.... To move a horror skilfully, to touch a soul to 
the quick, to lay upon fear as much as it can bear, to wean and weary 
a life till it is ready to drop and then step in with mortal instruments 
to take its last forfeit: this onl}^ a Webster can do...." 

p. 55, 1. 17. Deckar. Thomas Dekker, a voluminous dramatist, 
wrote alone The Shoemaker' s Holiday and Old Fortunatus, and many 
other plays in collaboration with Webster, Middleton and Massinger. 
His prose sketch or essay, The Gull's Hornbook {1609), is a lively 
and valuable sketch of how the contemporary gallant of fashion spent 
his days. Hazlitt is unnecessarily scornful of Dekker. 



192 Notes 

p. 55, 1. 18. Thomas Heywood. This dramatist is best remem- 
bered for A Woman Killed with Kindness (1607). His title to the 
epithet "voluminous" is estabUshed by his own confession that he 
had "either an entire hand or at the least a main finger" in the com- 
position of no less than 220 plays ! Of these some two dozen survive. 
Lamb magaanimously calls him "a sort of prose Shakespeare." 

p. 55, 1. 18. Beaumont and Fletcher. Many fine plays, including 
The Maid's Tragedy and Philaster, were written in collaboration by 
Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625). It 
is this pair of dramatists whom Keats addresses in his lines: 

Bards of Passion and of Mirth, 

Ye have left your souls on earth ! 

Have ye souls in heaven, too, 

Double-lived in regions new? 
p. 55, 1. 22. a vast species alone. From The Praise of Pindar, 
in Imitation of Horace's Second Ode, Bk IV, by Abraham Cowley 
(1618-1667): 

Pindar is imitable by none; 

The phoenix Pindar is a vast species alone. 
Cowley, a voluminous writer, considered in his own day among the 
greatest of poets, is now unread, save for a lyric or two in the antho- 
logies, and for his Essays, a few graceful prose compositions with 
appended verse and translations. His epic The Davideis and his 
alleged Pindarique Odes are quite forgotten. 

p. 55, 1. 25. Ben Jonson. This dramatist (i573?-i637) is one 
of the few contemporaries of Shakespeare who approach that supreme 
master in power. His principal plays are Every Man in His Humour, 
Cynthia's Revels, Sejanus, Volpone, Epicoene, The Alchemist, Catiline 
and Bartholomew Fair. He is the writer of some exquisite songs (to be 
found in the anthologies) and of the prose Timber, referred to on p. 175. 
Jonson died in poverty and was buried in Westminster Abbey, where 
the slab over his grave is inscribed "O Rare Ben Johnson," which, says 
Aubrey, "was done at the charge of Jack Young, afterwards knighted, 
who, walking there when the grave was covering, gave the fellow 
eighteenpence to cut it." 

p. 55, 1. 29. his romj-ntic visit. William Drummond of 
Hawthornden (1585-1649), a devoted adherent to the cause of Charles I, 
wrote many poems, but is remembered now almost solely for his sonnet 
on John the Baptist and his most interesting notes of conversations 
with Ben Jonson, when that sturdy dramatist visited him in 1618-19. 
This slim record of their talk is an invaluable collection of obiter dicta 
about many distinguished figures of Elizabethan and Jacobean times. 
Drummond died heart-broken after the execution of the king to whose 
cause he was so deeply attached. 

P- 55. 1- 33- Eugene Aram. This person (1704-1759) was the 
son of a Yorkshire gardener. He developed his considerable natural 
gifts by study and became a schoolmaster at Knaresborough. Here 
he was intimate with a certain Daniel Clark who disappeared in 1745 
with mysterious suddenness at a time when he was in the possession 
of much valuable property dishonestly acquired. Aram was suspected 
of being concerned in Clark's dishonesty, but no evidence could be 



Of Persons one would wish to have seen 193 

found against him. He left the neighbourhood and continued his 
studies in languages and his work as a teacher. He had really remark- 
able philological gifts and established the affinity of the Celtic with 
other European languages long before anyone else had discerned it. 
Several years later a confederate, Houseman, confessed that Clark was 
murdered, and implicated Aram. The bones of the murdered man 
were found, and Eugene Aram, then a schoolmaster at Lynn in Norfolk, 
was arrested, tried and hanged. Lytton has a novel with Eugene 
Aram as the chief figure, and Tom Hood's finely dramatic poem has 
made his name even more familiar. 

P- 55. 1- 34- tlie Admirable Crichton. James Crichton (1560- 
1585?), called the Admirable Crichton from his brilliant gifts of mind 
and person, was the son of a Scottish judge. He was educated at 
St Andrews, served in the French army and spent his latest years in 
Italy, making a great figure at the academies and universities. He 
seems to have astonished everyone by his command of languages, his 
marvellous memory and his skill with the rapier. However, in spite 
of his swordsmanship he was killed in a brawl — so at least tradition 
says. The extravagant eulogies of his friends were taken seriously 
in a later generation and Crichton became a sort of mythical epitome 
of human perfection. The first to write of him was Urquhart, the 
famous seventeenth century translator of Rabelais. A later life was 
published in 1819 by Patrick Eraser Tytler the Scottish historian. 
Crichton is also the hero of a very poor novel by Harrison Ainsworth. 
It should be added that Sir J. M. Barrie's delightful comedy The 
Admirable Crichton has nothing to do with the subject of this note. 

p. 56, 1. 7. Hobbes. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), a very 
voluminous philosophical writer, is remembered now almost solely by 
his Leviathan (1651), a very interesting discussion of government 
and social rights. A striking sketch of "the Philosopher of Malmesbury " 
appears in Shorthouse's fine novel John Inglesant. Hazhtt has an essay 
on his writings. 

p. 56, 1. 8. Leibnitz. Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716), a famous 
German philosopher, with sane and practical interests in many depart- 
ments of life and learning. His optimistic pliilosophy, involving the view 
that this is the best of all possible worlds, is ridiculed by Voltaire in 
the person of Dr Pangloss, the arch-optimist in Candide. Leibniz is 
further interesting from the fact that Bolingbroke borrowed his views, 
which were in turn borrowed by Pope and distilled into the couplets 
of the Essay on Man. 

p. 56, 1. 9. Jonathan Edwards. The elder of two writers bearing 
this name is plainly meant. He was a Connecticut man (1703- 
1758) but spent most of his hfe as a minister in Massachusetts and 
died shortly after being made President of Princeton College. His 
chief work is the Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will which competent 
critics say entitles him to be considered one of the greatest thinkers 
America has produced. Edwards held some of the views that we 
usually associate with Berkeley, and it is a curious coincidence 
that the Irish philosopher was living in Rhode Island at the very 
period when Edwards was beginning his career as a minister not far 
away. Sir Leslie Stephen has a very interesting essay on Jonathan 
Edwards in the first volume of his Hours in a Library. 

S. H, 13 



194 Notes 

p. 56, 1. 21. Dugald Stewart. This Scottish philosopher (1753- 
1828) was the author of several works — Elements of the Philosophy 
of the Human Mind, Outlines of Moral Philosophy, Philosophical Essays, 
etc. 

p. 56, 1. 23. scholiasts. Hazlitt uses this word incorrectly — 
perhaps because his beloved Sir Walter uses it in the same sense in The 
Monastery. The scholiasts were the ancient commentators on the classics 
— unknown students who wrote "scholia" or marginal notes, often of 
inestimable value, on the manuscripts of the classical authors, explaining 
difficulties of vocabulary, grammar or interpretation. Thomas Aquinas 
and Duns Scotus were not "scholiasts"; they were "scholastic philo- 
sophers" or "schoolmen," that is, teachers of theology, in medieval 
times, according to the rules of Aristotle's philosophy. Thomas 
Aquinas (1226-1274), "the Angelic Doctor," born at Aquino in southern 
Italy, was the greatest philosopher of the Middle Ages. He was a 
close student of Aristotle, and in his Summa Theologiae codified 
all theological doctrine according to the rules of Aristotle's logic. It 
is interesting to note that St Thomas wrote the famous Latin hymn, 
Pange, lingua, gloriosi 
Lauream certaminis, 
sung on Good Friday, and familiar in its "Ancient and Modern" 
version. 

Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle, 
Sing the last, the dread affray. 
St Thomas stood for authority and fixity of doctrine. Within the 
limits of theology as set by the Church all human knowledge was con- 
tained, and any attempt to pass those bounds was unlawful. His 
chief opponent was "the Subtle Doctor," Duns Scotus (1265-1308), 
a native of these islands, who argued for greater freedom, urging that 
practical faith, not speculative theory, was the first consideration in 
theology. The Dominican order of friars followed St Thomas Aquinas ; 
the Franciscans followed Duns Scotus. It might be mentioned that 
the term "dunce" originated from the abuse heaped upon Duns Scotus 
and his followers by later opponents. 

p. 56, 1. 31. irritabile genus. "Genus irritabile vatum," a 
quotation from Horace, Epistles, Book 11, ii, line 102. It may be 
translated "the cantankerous race of poets," 

p. 57, 1. 2. Gray. Thomas Gray (1716-1771), the famous 
author of the Elegy. Gray "declined the invitation" no doubt 
because of his personal shyness and his love of studious retirement. 
" He had not yet been asked " presumably because there was a tendency 
in the Wordsworth-Coleridge circle to depreciate Gray. Hazlitt 
himself is a little hesitant. Thus he writes: "Gray's Pindaric Odes 
[i.e. The Bard and The Progress of Poetry] are, I believe, generally 
given up at present : they are stately and pedantic, a kind of methodical 
borrowed frenzy. But I cannot so easily give up, nor will the world 
be in any haste to part with his Elegy in a Country Churchyard, etc." ; 
and then he goes on to praise this poem and the Letters, and to 
suggest faults in the Eton College ode. The whole of this passage 
in Lectures on the English Poets should be read as an instance 
of Hazlitt's own originality struggling against the influence of his 
surroundings. We may observe that the two "Pindaric Odes" are 



Of Persons one would wish to have seen 195 

very far from being "generally given up at present." Certain ultra- 
fastidious critics have tried, and still try, to depreciate the Elegy. 
They seem to think that its outstanding popularity is a mark of suspicion 
against it. But we must be careful. The best poetry may appeal 
only to a few; but we must not assume that everything the many 
like is trash. The final answer to all objections is this, that the balanced 
opinion of all sincere lovers of poetry during a hundred and fifty years 
is solidly against any attempt to depreciate Gray in general and to 
disparage the Elegy in particular. It is this balance of opinion 
over a long range of time that gives or withholds immortality in any 
art, and the individual opinions of isolated critics cannot set aside 
that verdict. 

p. 57, 1. 4. the Duchess of Bolton. Lavinia Fenton (1708- 
1760), a vivacious actress who took the town by storm in the character 
of Polly Peachum, the heroine of Gay's musical comedy The Beggar's 
Opera. She fascinated the third Duke of Bolton (1685-1754) who 
married her in 175 1 and thus initiated a matrimonial connection between 
the peerage and the stage, common enough now, but unheard of till 
then. One of Hogarth's best portraits is that of Lavinia Fenton as 
Polly. It is in the National Gallery. 

p. 57, 1. 5. Captain Sentry and Sir Roger de Goverley. 
A pair of simple-hearted, lovable gentlemen, members of the " Spectator 
Club," described in the delightful papers of Steele and Addison. 

p. 57, 1. 6. Swift. The great Dean of St Patrick's might very 
well behave in the manner suggested, for he was a masterful person, 
very terrible in his moods of silent anger and contempt, though normally 
pleasant and even amiable to his intimates. 

p. 57, 1. 7. Otway and Chatterton. Thomas Otway (1652-1685), 
a prolific dramatist, whose natural defects of character joined with 
an unhappy passion for the beautiful actress Mrs Barry to drive him 
to ruin, want, despair and a death — like his life — of abject misery. 
One of his tragedies, Venice Preserved, was long a favourite on the 
stage up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, the characters of 
Jaffier, Pierre and Belvidera being strong parts in the repertory of 
tragic actors and actresses. Thomas Chatterton (i 752-1 770) was a 
Bristol lad who began to write verses at a very early age. All his 
eagerness and energy centred in books, and, being specially attracted 
by certain old volumes and documents, he began to imitate the ancient 
style of hand and phrase, and at last to fabricate many manuscripts 
of prose arid verse which he alleged were written in the fifteenth century 
by a certain monk, Thomas Rowley. These Rowley poems aroused 
much interest; and, elated with the hope of success, Chatterton came 
to London in 1770, wrote feverishly all day, and almost all night, 
only to find that London offered him neither fame nor fortune, not 
even recognition, not so much as a scanty living. A few weeks of 
despair ended in three days of complete starvation. Haughtily 
refusing food offered by his landlady, he shut himself in his garret 
at Brooke Street, Holborn, and, after destrojdng all his papers, took 
poison. He was then httle more than seventeen and a half years of 
age. 

I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy. 
The sleepless soul that perished in his pride; 



196 Notes 

— so wrote Wordsworth, both finely and truly, for it is Chatterton's 
extraordinary life and tragic death, and not the poetical value of his 
work (frankly, not very great), to which his immortality of fame is due. 
See the conclusion of the sixth and the beginning of the seventh of 
Hazlitt's Lectures on the English Poets for a very sane discussion of 
Chatterton's merits. Thus in Hazlitt's assembly of poets, Otway and 
Chatterton appear as types of destitution so complete that they could 
not find the obolus (about three-half-pence) which, according to legend, 
was placed in the mouth of the dead as the fare of Charon, the boatman 
who ferried the departed across the river Styx into the realm of shades. 

p. 57, I. 10. Thomson. James Thomson (1700-1748), author 
of The Seasons and The Castle of Indolence, and specially famous 
for the words of Rule Britannia, the song with Arne's music, in 
the Masque of Alfred, is represented as falling asleep because he 
was fat, good-natured, rather greedy and somewhat lazy. He must 
not be confused with a nineteenth century poet James Thomson, 
author of the gloomy City of Dreadful Night. 

p. 57, 1. II. John Barleycorn. Barley is the grain from which 
malt liquor is brewed and whisky distilled. John Barleycorn, "the 
king's grain," is the subject of one poem by Burns and referred to 
in several others. His praise of Scotland's spirit was not based merely 
on report, hence the allusion in the text. In 1789 Burns was given 
an appointment in the Excise; that is why he is referred to as an 
exciseman. 

p 57,1.23. Leonardo. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), a painter 
of peculiar attractiveness, was also architect, engineer, anatomist, 
botanist and inventor with views on the possibilities of flying-machines. 
That is why he is represented with a bust of Archimedes (3rd century 
B.C.), the most famous of ancient philosophers. Genuine pictures by 
Leonardo are very rare in England and far from plentiful anywhere. 
The most famous is the " Monna Lisa " or " La Gioconda " in the Louvre, 
remarkable for the mysterious theft and restoration of which it was 
recently the subject. There is a valuable cartoon at Burlington House. 

p. 57, 1. 25. Raphael. According to tradition, La Fornarina 
("the baker's daughter") was Raphael's lover and model. A portrait 
called "La Fornarina" is in the Uffizi Gallery at Florence, and another 
in the Barberini Palace at Rome. Raphael did not paint a portrait 
of Lucrezia Borgia; but loose and inaccurate titles were often given, 
in Hazlitt's time, to pictures by the old masters. Hazlitt once saw a 
lock of golden hair alleged to be Lucrezia's, and refers to it several 
times. 

p. 57, 1. 27. Michael Angelo. This most masterful of artists 
(1475-1564) was one of the succession of architects employed in the 
erection of St Peter's, the present form of the building being largely his. 
Hence the allusion. 

p. 57, 1. 28. Correggio. Antonio AUegri (1494-1534), called 
Correggio from his birthplace, may not strike one specially as "the 
painter of angels." There are however many angels in his paintings 
in the Cathedral at Parma (which Hazlitt had visited), notably, "The 
Virgin Ascending," with a crowd of attendant angels and saints, 
painted in the cupola. There is a beautiful angel head in his " Madonna 
of St Jerome" (Parma Gallery) and two fine angel- musicians in the 



Of Persons one would wish to have seen 197 

"Madonna and Jesus with Angels" (Uffizi Gallery, Florence). Others 
occur in the church of St John the Evangelist at Parma, decorated 
by Correggio. 

p. 57, 1. 29. Titian. Tiziano Vecellio (1477-1576), a painter 
of superb power and range, is fairly well represented in England — 
the "Bacchus and Ariadne" in the National Gallery being one of his 
greatest productions. The picture Hazlitt calls his "Mistress" is in 
the Louvre. It is more accurately called "Laura de' Dianti" or 
"Alfonso da Ferrara and Laura de' Dianti." 

p. 57, 1. 30. Giorgione. Giorgio Barbarelli (1477-1510) was a 
fellow student in Venice with Titian. His influence in his own day 
was very great, but to us his fame is almost legendary, as very few 
existing pictures can be definitely assigned to him. Giorgione is the 
subject of a delightful essay in Walter Pater's volume The Renaissance. 

p. 57, 1. 30. Guido. The sentimental art of Guido Reni (1575- 
1642) is now less esteemed than formerly. " Aurora and the Hours," or 
"Aurora preceding the Chariot of Apollo," an elaborate ceiling painting 
in the Rospigliosi Palace at Rome, is considered by many to be his 
finest work. Guido was a spendthrift and gambler; hence Hazlitt's 
allusion to the dice box. 

p. 57, 1. 31. Claude. For this painter see p. 171. He is represented 
here with a mirror probably because his landscapes are faithful reflec- 
tions of Nature's moods. The several hundred existing sketches and 
drawings, nearly all direct notes from nature, prove that he was a 
diligent observer, eager to draw nature as he actually saw it, and not 
nature rearranged on classical principles. 

p. 57, 1. 32. Rubens. Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), the 
most flamboyant of Flemish painters, produced either alone, or with 
the help of assistants, many great pictures of historical scenes and 
classical legends, together with some admirable portraits, landscapes 
and religious pictures — the Antwerp "Descent from the Cross" being 
the most famous among the last-named group. He is well represented 
in England. His riotous pictures of mythological scenes abound in 
satyrs, panthers and other accompaniments of Bacchanalian revel — 
heiice the allusion in the text. Rubens was an accomplished man 
of the world and was twice sent on diplomatic missions to the Court 
of Spain. 

P- 57. 1- 33- Vandyke. Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599 — 1641), 
the pattern of courtly painters, was born in Antwerp, and, after visiting 
Italy, spent several years in England, where he was pensioned and 
knighted by Charles I. His early work was influenced by Rubens; 
but he is specially renowned for his magnificent portraits of noble 
ladies and gentlemen, painted during the later development of his art. 
"His own Paris" is doubtless the portrait of himself as the shepherd 
Paris, now in the Wallace collection, London. 

P- 57. 1- 33- Rembrandt. Rembrandt Harmensz van Ryn 
(1606-1669), born at Leyden in Holland, is one of the supreme artists 
of the world. He has left almost innumerable portraits, subject- 
pieces, landscapes, etchings, drawings, etc., all remarkable for mastery 
of line, form and lighting, and for power of expression. Rem- 
brandt was often his own model, and loved rendering the effect of 



igS Notes 

furs, rich costumes, gold, gems and similar properties. Portraits 
"richly dressed" are of frequent occurrence in his work. That is 
why Hazlitt imagines him as appearing in the fashion described. 

p. 58, 1. I. Giotto, Cimabue and Ghirlandaio . Cimabue 
(about 1240-1301) and his pupil Giotto (about 1266-1337), two Floren- 
tines, were the first to attempt the introduction of natural touches, 
based on direct observation, into the art of painting, which, till then, 
had been stiff, crude and expressionless, like work in mosaic. They 
may be regarded as the founders of modern painting. Certainly 
nothing like the sweet and appealing "St Francis preaching to the 
Birds" by Giotto had ever appeared before in European art. The 
work of Cimabue and Giotto (the names are pronounced Chee-ma- 
boo'-ay and Jotto) cannot be seen out of Italy, as it takes the form 
chiefly of frescoes on the walls of the upper and lower church at Assisi. 
Domenico del Ghirlandaio (i 447-1 494) is a painter of great charm and 
sincerity. Very little of his work can be seen out of Italy, as it is 
mainly in fresco. He is a much later artist, and it is not very critical 
of Hazlitt to link him thus with painters who flourished almost 
two centuries earlier. But the mere mention of their names at the 
date of Hazlitt's essay is a point of interest ; for we may remark that 
the progress of taste in pictorial art for the last century has been 
steadily away from such showy, insincere and sentimental work as 
that of Guido, once so popular, and towards the primitive beauty and 
sincerity of such work as that of Giotto, once thought barbarous and 
ugly. With this progress of taste the name of Ruskin is specially 
associated ; but that Hazhtt saw something of the truth is evident 
from passages in his Notes of a Journey through France and Italy. He 
is quite wrong, however, in attributing some of the Assisi frescoes to 
Ghirlandaio. He probably meant Cimabue. Ghirlandaio did paint 
scenes from the life of St Francis, but they are at Florence, and were 
painted not "within forty months" of the saint's death (as Hazlitt 
says), but two hundred and fifty years after. The remark, attributed 
to Lamb, about their having painted "when all was dark around 
them" is rather mysterious. It may mean that Giotto and Cimabue 
were initiators without the light of other men's experience to guide 
them, or it may be meant literally (as a sentence at the end of the 
essay seems to imply), in which case Lamb was probably alluding to 
the fact that much of their work was done in the dim light of church 
interiors. 

p. 58, 1. 4. Whose names, etc. The history of this quotation 
is rather interesting. "Writing to Bernard Barton (17 Feb. 1823), 
Lamb says : " I have quoted G. F. [i.e. George Fox, the founder of 
Quakerism] in my 'Quaker's Meeting' [Essays of Elia], as having 
said he was 'lifted up in spirit' (which I felt at the time to be not a 
Quaker phrase), 'and the Judge and Jury were as dead men under 
his feet.' I find no such words in his Journal, and I did not get them 
from Sewell, and the latter sentence I am sure I did not mean to invent. 
I must have put some other Quaker's words into his mouth. Is it a 
fatality in me, that everything I touch turns to a Lie ? I once quoted 
two Lines from a translation of Dante, which Hazlitt very greatly 
admired, and quoted in a Book as proof of the stupendous power of 
that poet, but no such lines are to be found in the translation, which 
has been searched for the purpose. I must have dreamed them, for 



Of Persons one would wish to have seen 199 

I am quite certain I did not forge them knowingly. What a misfortune 
to have a Lying memory." The allusion is to the essay "On Posthu- 
mous Fame " {Round Table) where Hazlitt writes : " Dante has conveyed 
the finest image that can perhaps be conceived of the power of this 
principle over the human mind, when he describes the heroes and 
celebrated men of antiquity as 'serene and smiling,' though in the 
shades of death, 

"Because on earth their names 

In Fame's eternal volume .shine for aye." 
Much the same sentence and quotation occur in Hazlitt's article on 
Sismondi's Literature of Southern Europe in The Edinburgh Review 
for June, 1815. The rendering (by Lamb's friend Cary) of a passage 
in Inferno, Canto iv, not unlike the quoted lines, reads thus: 
The renown of their great names 

That echoes through your world above acquires 

Favour in heaven. 
Probably the form taken by the lines in Lamb's (or HazUtt's) memory 
was influenced by the familiar strain from The Faerie Queene, Bk iv. 
Canto ii, Stan. 32 : 

Dan Chaucer, well of English undifyled, 

On Fames eternal beadroll worthie to be fyled. 

p. 58, 1. 18. the Duchess of Newcastle. Margaret Lucas 
(i624?-i674), second wife of William Cavendish, Duke, Marquis and 
Earl of Newcastle (1592-1676), wrote a ver}^ sincere but rather "roman- 
cical" eulogy of her Cavalier lord (1667). Her almost innumerable 
other works, including plays, poems and philosophical utterances, are 
very scarce and very little known, and would seem to afford a very 
interesting and practically untouched field of research for some future 
scholar. Lamb was never tired of praising this most devout lover 
among wives. "That princely woman the thrice noble Margaret 
Newcastle," he calls her, in The Two Races of Men; and again: 
"a dear favourite of mine, of the last century but one — the thrice 
noble, chaste, and virtuous, — but again, somewhat fantastical, and 
original-brained, generous Margaret Newcastle" {Mackery End); and 
again : " Such a book, for instance, as the Life of the Duke of Newcastle 
by his Duchess — no casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently durable, 
to honour and keep safe such a jewel" [Detached Thoughts on Books 
and Reading). Now hear another: "Thence home, and there, in 
favour to my eyes, stayed at home, reading the ridiculous History 
of my Lord Newcastle, wrote by his wife ; which shows her to be a 
mad, conceited, ridiculous woman, and he an ass to suffer her to write 
what she writes to him and of him." Thus Samuel Pepys. 

p. 58, 1. 18. Mrs Hutchinson. Lucy Apsley (1620-died some time 
after 1675), wife of Colonel John Hutchinson (1615-1664), wrote for 
her children's sake a life of her husband and their father. It is a most 
admirable account of a Puritan gentleman in the best sense of both 
terms. The book forms an excellent companion — and contrast — to the 
Duchess of Newcastle's panegyric. Mrs Hutchinson's book remained 
in manuscript till 1806 when it was first printed. 

p. 58, 1. 21. one in the room. Mary Lamb (1764-1847) was 
eleven years older than Charles. The history of literature offers few 



2D0 Notes 

stories so tragic yet so consoling as the life-long association of this 
famous brother and sister — the complete bachelor and the perfect old 
maid. Mary wrote verses which cannot be called important. Her chief 
contribution to literature is the larger part of the Tales from Shakespeare. 
Mary wrote the Comedies and Charles the Tragedies. 

p. 58, 1. 24. Ninon de Lenclos. The celebrated courtly beauty, 
friend of Moliere, Racine and Boileau, beloved of a long line of noble 
Frenchmen, including the Due de La Rochefoucauld, author of the 
famous Maxims, and the great Conde, victor of Rocroy. 

p. 58, 1. 27. Voltaire. Franfois Marie Arouet (1694-1778), 
among the greatest of French writers, was a most prolific author, 
producing in rapid succession histories, tales, poems, tragedies, 
pamphlets and innumerable letters, written with perfect ease of manner 
and popular directness of appeal. He assumed the name Voltaire 
in 1 71 8. He spent some time in England where he made the acquaint- 
ance of Bolingbroke, Pope and other famous men of the time. For 
several years, too, he lived in close intimacy with Frederick the Great. 
Voltaire assailed the political and religious abuses of the day with the 
utmost fearlessness, and his penetrating satire helped to prepare the 
way for the French Revolution. In keenness of edge and perfection 
of simplicity the prose of Voltaire is almost unsurpassed. If, as Hazlitt 
calls him, he is the "patriarch of levity," it should be added that his 
levity of manner was joined with deep gravity of matter and purpose. 

p. 58, 1. 28. Rabelais. Fran9ois Rabelais (i 483-1 553), born at 
Chinon in Touraine, entered a monastery and passed his early years 
in the study of languages and science. He became disgusted with the 
narrowness and ignorance of the Church and showed his sympathy 
with "the New Learning" that we associate with the names of Erasmus, 
Colet and More. His great work, detailing the life and adventures of 
the giant Gargantua and his son Pantagruel, is a wild medley of coarse 
and riotous fun, biting satire and rich wisdom. Three books of it 
were translated by Sir Thomas Urquhart(i6ii-i66o), a Scottish scholar, 
and the rest by P. A. Motteux (1660-1718). 

p. 58, 1. 29. Moliere. Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (1662-1673), who 
took the name of Moliere, was born in Paris and studied law; but in 
1643 he formed a troupe of comedians, and, like the English actor- 
manager William Shakespeare, wrote plays for his company to perform. 
The comedies of Moliere, embodying, as they do, enduring types of 
human weakness and folly, are an important contribution to the 
literature of the world and hold the stage as strongly now as when 
they were written. In recent years the great French actor Coquelin 
scored his chief successes in the comedies of Moliere, his Mascarille 
{Les Pr&cieuses Ridicules), Tartufe and Monsieur Jourdain (Le 
Bourgeois Gentilhomme) being specially delightful interpretations. 
Tartufe (in the play of that name) mentioned in Hazlitt's text is, like 
the Pecksniff of Dickens, an example of roguery hypocritically masking 
itself in morality. 

p. 58, 1, 30. the print of that subject. The picture of Molidre 
reading Tavhife at the house of Ninon was painted by Nicolas-Andre 
Monsiau and exhibited at the Salon of 1802. An engraving of this 
picture was exhibited at the Salon of 1814 by Jean-Louis Ansehn, 
whose work is usually signed "Anselin, Bourgeois de Calais." 



Of Persons one would wish to have seen 201 

p. 58, 1. 32. Racine. Jean Racine (1639-1699), the great French 
dramatist, wrote tragedies that still hold the highest rank in the 
theatre of France. Andromaque, Iphiginie, Les Plaideurs (a serious 
comedy), Phedre, Athalie and Bajazet may be named among his works. 
The part of the guilty Phddre was one of Sarah Bernhardt's greatest 
impersonations. 

p. 58, 1. 32. Lafontaine. Jean de Lafontaine (1621-1695), the 
French poet, is remembered chiefly for his dehghtful Fables choisies 
mises en Vers, familiar to every student of French. 

p. 58, 1. 32. La Rochefoucauld. Fran9ois, Due de La Roche- 
foucauld (1613-1680), a French nobleman who played a prominent 
part at court in the days of Richelieu and Mazarin, wrote a collection 
of Reflexions, ou Sentences et Maximes Morales — a very masterly work 
both in matter and in style. Hazlitt's volume called Characteristics 
(1823) was written in imitation of La Rochefoucauld. 

p. 58, 1. 32. Saint-Evremond. Charles Marguetel Saint-Denis, 
Seigneur de Saint-Evremond (1613-1703), was a courtier, scholar and 
soldier. He is remembered now — at least by Englishmen — rather for 
his connection with Ninon and her brilhant circle than for any work 
of his own. 

p. 58, 1. 38. Tamerlane. Tamerlane or Timour (1336-1405). the 
great Mongol chieftain, overran and conquered most of western Asia. 
He is the subject of Marlowe's drama Tamburlame the Great. The 
most generally accessible account of the conquests of Timour is the 
excellent chapter (lxv) in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman 
Empire. 

p. 58, 1. 38. Genghis Khan. Chingiz, Genghis, Jenghis, or Zenghis 
Khan (i 162-1227) was a Mongol chief who conquered and governed 
vast kingdoms and empires stretching from Poland to China, from the 
Black Sea to the Pacific Ocean. His personal name was Temujin. 
Chingiz Khan is a title meaning The Most Mighty Ruler. See Chapter 
LXiv of The Decline and Fall for an excellent account of his hfe and 
conquests. 

p. 59, 1. 4. Your most exquisite reason. Twelfth Night, Act 11, 
Sc. iii, 1. 155. 

p. 59, 1. 19. Leonardo's very fine one. The famous "Last 
Supper" by Leonardo da Vinci is in the refectory of Santa Maria delle 
Grazie at Milan. The picture is painted on the wall and has almost 
entirely perished. Elaborate restoration has left very little of the 
original work. 

p. 59, 1. 21. Oh! ever right, Menenius. Coriolanus, Act 11, 
Sc. i, 11. 208-9. 

p. 59, 1. 24. If Shakespeare, etc. This remark here given to 
Hunt is assigned to Lamb by the report of other hearers. 

P- 59, h 33. overspread Europe. HazHtt, the convinced 
Revolutionist and steady admirer of Napoleon, here refers to the break- 
up of the Congress of Vienna caused by the news of Napoleon's escape 
from Elba. See the note on p. 174. But the wonderful adventure 
of the Hundred Days came to nothing. Napoleon was defeated, 
and "the night [of reaction] overspread Europe" once more. 



202 Notes 



ON READING OLD BOOKS 

Essay xx in The Plain Speaker. First published in The London 
Magazine, Feb. 1821. The reader should compare this essay with 
Charles Lamb's "Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading "" which 
appeared in The Lojidon Magazine a little more than a year later. 

p. 60, 1. 5. Tales of My Landlord. This was the general title 
under which certain of Scott's novels were first published. There 
were three series of Tales. The Black Dwarf and Old Mortality 
formed the first ; The Heart of Midlothian the second ; The Bride of 
Lammermoor and A Legend of Montrose the third. The authorship 
of the novels, though an increasingly open secret, was not formally 
disclosed till 1827. 

p. 60, 1. 7. Lady Morgan's. Sydney Owenson (1780-1859), 
born in Dublin, married Thomas Charles Morgan. M.D., afterwards 
knighted. Lady Morgan wrote novels, poems, memoirs and travels. 
Of her once popular stories, St Clair, The Wild Irish Girl and O'Donnel, 
only the second can be said to survive. 

p. 60, 1. 8. Anastasius. By Thomas Hope (1774-1831), a 
traveller in the East and a writer on artistic furniture, costumes, etc. 
His Anastasius, or the Memoirs of a Modern Greek (1819), was much 
admired in its day as a revelation of the East to general readers. 

p. 60, 1. II. Delphine. A novel by Madame de Stael, pubhshed 
in 1802. The writer was the daughter of Necker, immortal as the 
rather mediocre finance minister who was to save France from bank- 
ruptcy, and whose dismissal by the Court in 1789 caused the popular 
outburst that culminated in the taking of the Bastille. His only 
daughter married the Swedish ambassador Baron de Stael-Holstein 
and became for some years a very prominent person in the world of 
European politics and literature. Her novels Corinne, and Delphine, 
and her Dix annees d'exil and De I'Allemagne, have now an interest 
that is mainly historical. 

p. 60, 1. 13. in their newest gloss. Macbeth, Act i, Sc. vii, 1. 34 : 
And I have bought 
Golden opinions from aU sorts of people, 
Which should be worn now in their newest gloss. 

p. 60, 1. 18. black-letter. Books of the fifteenth and early 
sixteenth century, printed in Gothic type, or "black letter" as it is 
called from the general appearance of the pages. 

p. 60, 1. 19. Andrew Millar. An eighteenth century publisher 
and bookseller immortalised in two passages of Boswell. Millar was 
the principal publisher concerned in the issue of the Dictionary. 
"When the messenger who carried the last sheet to Millar returned, 
Johnson asked him, 'Well, what did he say?' 'Sir' (answered the 
messenger), 'he said Thank God I have done with him.' 'I am glad,' 
(replied Johnson with a smile), 'that he thanks God for anything.'" 
Johnson paid him a very sincere tribute in another utterance, unusual 
from a hack-author about a publisher: "I respect Millar, Sir; he has 
raised the price of literature." 



On Reading Old Books 203 

p. 60, 1. 20. Thurloe's State Papers. John Thurloe (1616-1668), 
a secretary during the Protectorate of Cromwell, published a collection 
of State Papers in seven large volumes. 

p. 60, 1.21. Sir William Temple's Essays. Sir William Temple 
(162S-1699) was the statesman and ambassador who negotiated the 
marriage between William Prince of Orange and Mary daughter of 
James II. His Essays were published under the title Miscellanea, 
and one of them, called Upon the Ancient and Modern Learning, 
gave rise to a vain dispute about the merits of ancient and modern 
literature, now only memorable from the fact that Temple's secretary, 
young Jonathan Swift, entered the lists with his Battle of the Books 
on behalf of his patron's views. For Temple generally see Macaulay's 
fine essay, and for his prose see Lamb's The Genteel Style in Writing. 

p. 60, 1. 22. Sir Godfrey Kneller. A German artist (1646-1723) 
who came to England and was appointed court painter. He is famous 
for the series of later Stewart portraits, many of which are at Hampton 
Court. He died at Twickenham, where his house is now a school of 
military music. 

p. 61, 1. 18. Rifacimentos. An Italian word (here with English 
plural) meaning something made a second time, and so, a recast. 

p. 61, 1. 40. for thoughts, etc. A combination of passages 
from Ophelia's flower scene, Hamlet, Activ, Sc. v. 1. 175, etc. : "There's 
rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember; and there 
is pansies, that's for thoughts." 

p. 62, 1. I. Fortunatus' Wishing Cap. In the old story, 
Fortunatus met the goddess of Fortune, who offered him a choice of 
six blessings. Wisdom, Strength, Health, Beauty, Long Life and 
Riches. Fortunatus chose Riches, and received a purse that should 
never be empty. He went to Cyprus where, by a trick, he gained the 
Sultan's chief treasure, the Wishing Cap, which gave instant realisation 
to the wearer's desire to be transported to any place in the world. 
Like most tales of the sort, this has a moral ; for the wishing cap and 
inexhaustible purse brought disaster and death to Fortunatus and his 
sons. The order of events in this note follows The Pleasant Comedy of 
Old Fortunatus, a play by Thomas Dekker (1600). 

p. 62, 1. 5. My father Shandy. Hazlitt's father was the same 
good-hearted, simple, bookish and unworldly sort of person as Tristram's 
father in Sterne's ever delightful book. 

p. 62, 1. 5. Bruscambille . Bruscambille's prologue upon long 
noses was a volume that the elder Mr Shandy bought for three half- 
crowns and proceeded to solace himself with from morning to night 
as soon as he had brought it home. It is hardly necessary to add that 
Bruscambille and his prologue are both imaginary. 

p. 62, 1. 6. Peregrine Pickle. The famous novel by Tobias 
Smollett (1721-1771). Of Smollett's works, the most enduring are 
Roderick Random (1748), Peregrine Pickle (1751) and Humphrey 
Clinker (1771). The "Memoirs of Lady Vane" occur in Peregrine 
Pickle. 

p. 62, 1. 7. Tom Jones. This, probably the greatest of all 
English novels, was written by Henry Fielding (i 707-1 754). Fielding's 
chief works are Joseph Andrews (1742), Tom Jones (1749), Amelia 



204 Notes 

(1752) and A Jottrnal of a Voyage to Lisbon (1755). It was at Lisbon, 
whither he had gone in search of health, that Fielding died. Lady 
Bellaston, Thwackum, Square, Molly Seagrim, Sophia Western and 
her deeply political aunt are all characters in Tom. Joyies. This novel 
has received the most magnificent compliment ever paid by one dis- 
tinguished writer to another. Fielding was connected with the family 
of the Earls of Denbigh, and the Denbighs were supposed (quite 
erroneously) to be connected with the Imperial House of Habsburg. 
Thus writes Edward Gibbon, greatest of English historians, in his 
autobiography: "Far different have been the fortunes of the English 
and German divisions of the House of Habsburg ; the former, the 
knights and sheriffs of Leicestershire, have slowly risen to the dignity 
of a peerage ; the latter, the Emperors of Germany and Kings of Spain, 
have threatened the liberty of the old, and invaded the treasures of the 
new world. The successors of Charles the Fifth may disdain their 
brethren of England ; but the romance of Tom Jones, that exquisite 
picture of human manners, will outlive the palace of the Escurial, 
and the imperial eagle of the house of Austria." 

p. 62, 1. 18. the puppets dallying'. Hamlet, Act iii, Sc. ii, 1. 256 : 
"I could interpret between you and your love, if I could see the puppets 
dallying." 

p. 62, 1. 29. ■when ' ignorance -was bliss.' Gray, Ode on a Distant 
Prospect of Eton College : 

Yet ah, why should they know their fate, 
Since sorrow never comes too late. 
And happiness too quickly flies? 
No more ! Where ignorance is bliss 
'Tis folly to be wise. 

p. 62, 1. 30! a raree-show. A peep show; some curiosity shut 
in a portable box or case and looked at through a glass front. 

p. 63, 1. 3. the Ballantyne press. The printing firm of two 
brothers James and John Ballant^me, famous for producing certain 
of Scott's works. Scott was afterwards a partner in the concern, 
the bankruptcy of which was one of the great tragedies in his life. 

p. 63, 1. 4. the Minerva press. A pubhshing house remarkable 
for the melodramatic stories it issued. 

p. 63, 1. 10. Cooke's pocket-edition. Tom Jones occupied 
Vols. l-iv of Cooke's "Select Edition of British Novels." 

p. 63, 1. 12. a tiresome ecclesiastical history. Possibly the 
once popular History of the Church by Joseph and Isaac Milner. 

p. 63, 1. 13. Mrs Radcliffe's Romance of the Forest. Anne 
RadcHffe (1764-1823) was the most "thrilling" noveUst of her time. 
Her chief tales, The Romance of the Forest (1791), The Mysteries of 
Udolpho{i794) and The Italian (1797), are full of mystery, rums, cloaked 
villains and all the other apparatus of melodrama. 

p. 63, 1. 14. sweet in the mouth. The Revelation, x, 9: "And 
I went unto the angel, and said unto him, Give me the little book. 
And he said unto me. Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy 
belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey." 

p. 63, 1. 17. gay creatures, etc. See p. 185. 



On Reading Old Books 205 

p. 63, 1. 27. Parson Adams. Parson Adams and Mrs Slipslop 
are characters in Fielding's Joseph Andrews. 

p. 63, 1. 34. It was just like, etc. Some one of Hazlitt's several 
attachments, possibly Sarah Walker, whose acquaintance he had just 
made at the date of this essay. 

p. 63, 1. 38. Major Bath and Commodore Trunnion. The first 
in Fielding's Amelia, the second in Smollett's Peregrine Pickle. Major 
Bath is an honourable gentleman of straitened means who, to deceive 
the world, puts a bold front on his bearing, and swaggers like a man 
of consequence. The Commodore, anticipating Dickens's Wemmick, 
fortifies his house with moat and drawbridge, sleeps in a hammock 
and sets his "crew" of servants to keep naval watches. His epitaph, 
expressed in naval terms, is a very remarkable document. 

p. 63, 1. 38. Trim and my Uncle Toby. In Sterne's Tristram 
Shandy — two of the most delightful characters in Enghsh fiction. 

P- 63, 1. 39. Gil Bias, etc. The strange love affair between the 
elderly duenna Dame Loren9a Sephora and the dashing Gil Bias is 
related in Book vii. Chapter i of Le Sage's famous story. 

p. 63, 1. 40. Laura and the fair Lucretia. Laura, formerly a 
fellow servant with Gil Bias, becomes a famous actress. In the latter 
part of the novel we meet her youthful daughter Lucretia whose beauty 
fascinates Philip IV of Spain. 

p. 64, 1. 14. Chubb's Tracts. Thomas Chubb (1679-1747) wrote 
many tracts or essays on theological subjects, taking a somewhat 
freer view of religion than was usual at the time. Chubb was born 
near Salisbury and received only the most elementary education. 
Hence the allusion in the te.xt to Salisbury and the club of shoemakers. 

p. 64, 1. 23. fate, free-will, etc. See p. 161. 

p. 64, 1. 28. never seen Wittenberg, etc. For Marlowe, see p. 191. 
Of his tragedy Dr Faustus, the best part is the soliloquy of the 
sinful scholar on the night when his compact with the Evil One 
expires and his soul must pay the forfeit. In his last conversation with 
three scholars who visit him Faustus exclaims: "Faustus' offence 
can ne'er be pardoned. The serpent that tempted Eve may be saved, 
but not Faustus. O Gentlemen hear me with patience and tremble 
not at my speeches ! Though my heart pants and quivers to remember 
that I have been a student here these thirty years, oh, would I had 
ne'er seen Wittenberg, never read book!" 

p 64, 1. 29. Hartley. David Hartley (i 705-1 757), a philosopher, 
author of Observations on Man. Hartley's doctrines of vibrations 
and the association of ideas form his chief contribution to thought. 
See Biographia Literaria, chapters 5-7. Hartley was much admired 
by Hazlitt's contemporaries. Indeed Coleridge named his eldest son 
after the philosopher. Hume, Berkeley, Locke and Hobbes have 
been dealt with in earlier notes. 

p. 64, 1. 38. the New^ Eloise. For Rousseau see p. 167. Julie, 
ou La Nouvelle Helo'ise, is a long romance, written, like the novels of 
Richardson, in the form of letters. Saint-Preux and Julie are the 
hero and heroine of the story and their correspondence forms the bulk 
of the book. The description of the kiss occurs in Part i. Letter 14, 
the excursion on the water Part iv. Letter 17, Saint- Preux's description 



2o6 Notes 

of their early love at the end of the same letter, and the account of 
Julie's death, Part vi. Letter ii. 

p. 65, 1. 10. the Dedication to the Social Contract. Rousseau's 
famous treatise was published in 1762. There is no "Dedication" 
to it. Possibly Hazlitt means one of Rousseau's anticipatory pieces, 
such as the Discourse on Inequality (1755). 

p. 65, 1. 12. I have spoken elsewhere. The Round Table 
essay On the Character of Rousseau. 

p. 65, 1. 13. Sweet is the dew, etc. This sentence occurs in 
the essay referred to above. However, in an earlier paper, that on 
Miss O'Neill's Juliet, Hazlitt writes: "To the tears formerly shed on 
such occasions, we may apply the words of a modern dashing orator, 
'Sweet is the dew of their memory, and pleasant the balm of their 
recollection.'" This earliest use of the sentence seems to contradict 
the implication in the present essay that the words are his own. 

p. 65, 1. 15. scattered like stray-gifts. A reminiscence of 
Wordsworth's Stray Pleasures : 

They dance not for me. 
Yet mine is their glee ! 
Thus pleasure is spread through the earth 
In stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find; 
Thus a rich loving-kindness, redundantly kind, 
Moves all nature to gladness and mirth, 
p. 65, 1. 17. the Emilius. 'Rousseau's Simile, ou I'^ducatton. See 
note on p. 169. 

p. 65, 1. 33. leurre de dupe. A sham or decoy. Hazhtt got the 
phrase from Rousseau's Confessions: e.g. "et regardant, selon mon 
ancienne maxime, les objets lointains commes des leurres de dupe, 
etc." Book IX. 

P- 65, 1. 37, footnote, a friend. Charles Lamb. Hazhtt seems 
to be the only authority for this story. 

p. 66, 1. 1 . a load to sink a navy. Henry VIII, Act iii, Sc. ii, 1. 382 : 
The king has cured me ; 
I humbly thank his grace; and from these shoulders, 
These ruined pillars, out of pity, taken 
A load would sink a navy: too much honour, 
p. 66, 1. 21. Marcian Colonna. An Itahan tale in rimed verse 
by Barry Cornwall, the pen name of Bryan Waller Procter (i 787-1 874). 
The line is quoted from a Sonnet by Charles Lamb, To the Author of 
Poems published under the name of Barry Cornwall. 

p. 66, 1. 22. Mr Keats's Eve of St Agnes. This poem was first 
published in the volume of 1820 which contains Keats's greatest pieces. 
The allusions in the text are drawn from the famous 24th and 25th stanzas* 
A casement high and triple-arched there was. 
All garlanded with carven imag'ries 
Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass. 
And diamonded with panes of quaint device. 
Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes. 
As are the tiger-moth's deep damasked wings; 
And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries, 
A shielded scutcheon blushed with blood of queens and kings. 



On Reading Old Books aoy 

Full on this casement shone the wintry moon, 
And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast. 
As down she knelt for heaven's grace and boon; 
Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest. 
And on her silver cross soft amethyst, 
And on her hair a glory, like a saint: 
She seemed a splendid angel, newly drest, 
Save wings, for heaven : — Porphyro grew faint : 
She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint. 
p. 66, 1. 24. come like shadow^s. See p. 180. 
p. 66, 1. 33. my Lord Hamlet. A reference to Act 11, Sc. ii : 
Polonius. I'll speak to him again. What do you read, my lord? 
Hamlet. Words, words, words. 
Pol. What is the matter, my lord? 
Ham. Between who? 

Pol. I mean, the matter that you read, my lord? 
p. 66, 1. 39. the great preacher. Edward Irving (i 792-1 834), 
a Scottish preacher who created much sensation by his fervid eloquence 
and his alleged gift of prophecy. He was appointed preacher at the 
Caledonian Chapel, Hatton Garden, in 1822. He was afterwards accused 
of heresy, and, being dismissed from the ministry, founded a new 
religious body known as the Catholic Apostolic Church. See The Spirit 
of the Age. 

p. 67, 1. 3. as the hart. Psalm xlii, i : "As the hart panteth 
after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God." 

p. 67, 1. 5. Goethe's Sorrows of Werter. Johann Wolfgang 
Goethe (1749-1832), the greatest of German writers. His tearfully 
sentimental romance The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), the most 
popular book of its time, has lost much of its interest for the modern 
reader, who is more apt to remember it for the sake of Thackeray's 
delightful verses* about Charlotte and the bread-and-butter than for 
its own. 

p. 67, 1. 6. Schiller's Robbers. Johann Christoph Friedrich 
Schiller (1759-1805), the great German poet, wrote in his youth The 
Robbers, a play, the violent and rather operatic romanticism of 
which came like a new note into the dry German literature of its time. 
Coleridge has translated two of his later and better plays, Piccolomini 
and Wallenstein's Death. 

p. 67,1. 7. Giving my stock, etc. As You Like It, Actii.Sc.i, I. ^y: 
First for his weeping into the needless stream: 
"Poor deer," quoth he, "thou mak'st a testament 
As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more 
To that which hath too much." 
p. 67, 1. 8. Coleridge's fine Sonnet. To the Author of the 
Robbers (1794). The present day reader will probably think this 
Sonnet less fine than Hazlitt found it. The "dark dungeon" and 
the "famished father's cry" are allusions to scenes in the play — the 
old Count de Moor having been imprisoned by his villainous son Francis 
de Moor in an old tower in a forest where he is left to starve. He is 
liberated by his outcast but noble-hearted son, Charles de Moor, captain 
of the robber band. 



2o8 Notes 

p. 67, 1. 16. the Lyrical Ballads. This famous little volume 
published by Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1798 was the herald of a 
new movement in English poetry. 

p. 67, 1. 20. Valentine, Tattle and Miss Prue. Characters 
in the interesting prose comedy Love for Love by William Congreve 
(1670-1729). Valentine, the hero, feigns madness in order to circum- 
vent his stingy father. Tattle is a foolish vainglorious fop. Prue is a 
young, silly, country-bred girl. 

p. 67, 1. 26. know my cue. Othello, Act i, Sc. ii, 1. 84 : 
Were it my cue to fight, I should have known it 
Without a prompter. 
p. 67, 1. 27. Intus et in cute. Persius, Satires, iii, 30, "inside and 
out"; literally, "inwardly and in the skin." It is the motto of 
Rousseau's Confessions. 

p. 67, 1. 39. The Periodical Essayists. The most famous of 
these periodical issues of light essays and reiiections were The Tatlev 
(1709-1711) and The Spectator (1711-1712) written mainly by Steele 
and Addison. The Rambler (i 749-1 752) was written very largely by 
Johnson. The Adventurer (1752-53) was written chiefly by John 
Hawkesworth and partly by Johnson. The World (1753-1756) was 
written by various hands, none of great importance; and the same 
may be said of The Connoisseur (i 754-1 756). 

p. 68, 1. II. bright Clarissa. Clarissa, the heroine of Richardson's 
fine novel bearing that name. Clementina appears in Sir Charles 
Grandison and Pamela in the novel of that name. Lovelace, mentioned 
in the footnote, is the heartless officer who causes the ruin and death 
of Clarissa. For Richardson generally, see p. 188. 

p. 68, 1. 12. ■with every trick and line, etc. A reminiscence of 
All's Well that Ends Well, Act i, Sc. i, U. 105-7: 

'Twas pretty, though a plague. 
To see him every hour; to sit and draw 
His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls. 
In our heart's table ; heart too capable 
Of every line and trick of his sweet favour. 

p. 68, 1. 14. Mackenzie's Julia. Henry Mackenzie (1745-1831), 
a once popular writer of sentimental fiction, but now little more than 
a name. His chief works are The Man of Feeling (1771), The Man of 
the World (1773) and Julia de Roubigne (1771). 

p. 68, 1. 19. Miss . Probably Miss Railton of Liverpool, 

daughter of the man who commissioned Hazlitt to make copies of 
certain pictures in the Louvre. 

p. 68, 1. 19. that ligament. The conclusion of the affecting 
story of Le Fever told in certain chapters of Tristram Shandy, Book vi : 
"The blood and spirits of Le Fever, which were waxing cold and slow 
within him, and were retreating to their last citadel, the heart — 
rallied back, — the film forsook his eyes for a moment — he looked up 
wishfully in my uncle Toby's face, — then cast a look upon his boy, — 
and that ligament, fine as it was, — was never broken." 

p. 68, 1. 25. His story of the Hawk. See p. 184. 



On Reading Old Books 209 

p. 68, 1. 29. Farquhar. George Farquhar (1678-1707), author 
of several comedies, the best of which are The Beaux' Stratagem, and 
The Recruiting Officer. 

p. 68, 1. 31. at one proud swoop. Doubtless a reference to 
Macbeth, Act iv, Sc. iii, 1. 219, etc.: 

All mv pretty ones? 
Did you say all? "O hell-kite! All? 
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam 
At one fell swoop? 
p. 69, 1. 4. with all its giddy raptures. A reminiscence of 
Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey lines, 83-5: 

That time is past, 
And all its aching joys are now no more. 
And all its dizzy raptures. 
p. 69, 1. 5. embalmed with odours. Paradise Lost, 11, 842-3: 
thou and Death 
Shall dwell at ease, and up and down unseen 
Wing silently the buxom air embalmed 
With odours. 

p. 69. 1. 15. His form, etc. Paradise Lost, i, 591-594. 
p. 69, 1. 19. falls flat upon the grunsel edge. Paradise Lost, i, 
460, etc. : 

Next came one 
Who mourned in earnest, when the captive ark 
Maimed his brute image, head and hands lopt off 
In his own temple, on the grunsel-edge 
Where he fell flat, and shamed his worshippers: 
Dagon his name. 
The story is told in i Samuel, v, 1-4. 

p. 69, 1. 29. his Letter to a Noble Lord. For his political 
services Burke had been granted a pension. This grant was opposed 
by the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale, Whig peers 
pretending to some sympathy with the French Revolution. Burke 
replied with his crushing and eloquent Letter to a Noble Lord. It is 
not correct to say that Burke calls the Earl "Citizen Lauderdale"; 
but early in the Letter there is a reference to "citizen Brissot and his 
friend Lauderdale." 

p. 69, 1. 40. like an eagle. Coriolanus, Act v, Sc. vi, 1. 15 : 
If you have writ your annals true, 'tis there, 
That, like an eagle in a dove-cote, I 
Fluttered your Volscians in Corioli: 
Alone I did it. 
p. 70, 1. II. an Essay on Marriage. No such essay by Words- 
worth is known to exist. Wordsworth had written in 1793 a prose 
apology for the French Revolution entitled A Letter to the Bishop of 
Landaff, and in 1809 a tract called Concerning the Relations of Great 
Britain, Spain and Portugal to each other, etc. — a tract known by its 
abbreviated title The Convention of Cintra. This Canning held to be 
the most eloquent political pamphlet since Burke's day. Whether 
either of these is meant; whether HazUtt was confused; or (more 



210 Notes 

likely) whether Coleridge was dreaming, must remain conjectures. 
In any case the matter is not important; for, in spite of Coleridge's 
assertion, Wordsworth's prose, at its strongest and most eloquent, 
bears no resemblance whatever to that of Burke. 

p. 70, 1. 34. worthy of all acceptation, i Timothy, i, 15. 

p. 71, 1. 6. Lord Clarendon's History. A dignified History of 
the Rebellion in England was written by Edward Hyde, Earl of Claren- 
don (1608-1674). Among the "well-penned characters" of Clarendon 
may be named the fine sketches of Falkland and Hampden. 

p. 71, 1. 12. Froissart's Chronicles. Jean Froissart (1333-1419) 
wrote Chronicles of the great war between England and France from 
1326 to 1400. It was translated into picturesque Tudor English by 
Lord Berners (1523). 

p. 71, 1. 12. Holinshed. Raphael Hohnshed (died about 1580) 
wrote The Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, famous as the 
source from which Shakespeare drew the subject matter of his historical 
plays. 

p. 71, 1. 12. Stow. John Stow (1525-1605) wrote Chronicles; 
but his most important work is the Survey of London and Westminster 
(1598). 

p. 71, 1. 13. Fuller's Worthies. Thomas Fuller (1608-1661) was 
a voluminous author and one of the earliest of national biographers. 
His greatest work, the uncompleted Worthies of England, is a treasure 
of valuable biographical information expressed in quaint style. 

p. 71, 1. 18. Thucydides. The greatest of Greek historians; 
he flourished about 400 b.c. Of the many speeches in his history the 
most famous is that ascribed to Pericles in Book 11. 

p. 71, 1. 18. Guicciardini's History of Florence. Francesco 
Guicciardini (1483-1540) wrote a valuable history of Italy from 1494 
to 1532, not a specific history of Florence. Perhaps Hazlitt was thinking 
of the History of Florence written by the celebrated statesman and 
political philosopher Niccol6 Machiavelli (1469-1527). 

p. 71, 1. 20. Loves of Persiles and Sigismunda. This was 
the last work of Cervantes (1547-1616), the immortal author of Don 
Quixote. Galatea, a pastoral romance, was his first work. A new 
EngUsh translation of the latter was published in 1903. It must be 
pronounced far less readable than the ever delightful Don Quixote 
and the interesting Exemplary Novels. 

p. 71, 1. 22. Another Yarrow. From Wordsworth's Yarrow 

Unvisited : 

Be Yarrow stream unseen, unknown I 
It must, or we shall rue it: 
( We have a vision of our own; 

Ah! why should we undo it? 
The treasured dreams of times long past. 
We'll keep them, winsome Marrow ! 
For when we're there, although 'tis fair, 
'Twill be another Yarrow ! 



ON ACTORS AND ACTING. I 

The Round Table, Essay 38. First published in The Examiner, 
Jan. 5, 1817. The two essays should be compared with Lamb's On 
Some of the Old Actors, On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century, 
On the Acting of Munden, Stage Illusion and The Tragedies of 
Shakespeare. 

p. 72, 1. I. the abstracts and brief chronicles. Hamlet, 
Act II, Sc. ii, 1. 548, etc.: "Good my lord, will you see the players 
well bestowed ? Do you hear, let them be well used ; for they are the 
abstract and brief chronicles of the time." 

p. 72, 1. II. hold a glass, etc. Doubtless another reminiscence 
of Hamlet — the famous speech to the players (Act iii, Sc. iii) in which 
it is said that the purpose of playing is "to hold, as 'twere, the mirror 
up to nature." 

p. 72, 1. 17. we. ..imitate them. For an amusing sketch of a man 
who loses his own personal identity through unconscious imitation of 
stage heroes see H. G. Wells's short story The Obliterated Man. 

p. 73, 1. 8. the Beggar's Opera. Gay's famous comedy 
interspersed with songs. The hero is a highwayman, the heroine the 
daughter of a dishonest informer and receiver, and the rest of the 
personages thieves and loose characters. 

p. 73, 1. 18. George Barnwell. A play by George Lillo (1693- 
1739) showing the influence of bad companionship upon the young 
employee of a London merchant. He yields to temptation and in 
the end is hanged for robbery and murder. This piece was for a long 
time performed every year in London as a piece of moral instruction 
to young men. 

p. 73, 1. 19. the Ordinary's sermon. By the "ordinary" here 
is meant the chaplain of Newgate. Compare Defoe's Moll Flanders : 
"All the while the poor condemned creatures were preparing for death, 
and the Ordinary, as they call him, was busy with them, disposing them 
to submit to their sentences." 

p. 73, 1. 26. the Inconstant. The Inconstant, or The Way to Win 
Him, is a comedy by George Farquhar. But the heroine's name is 
" Oriana," not "Orinda." 

p. 74, 1. 7. Mr Liston. John Liston (1776-1846), a popular 
comedian, whose performance in the familiar farce JPaul Pry was 
specially famous. One of Lamb's minor essays is a mock biography 
of Liston. 

p. 74, 1. 19. Etherege. For Sir George Etherege, see p. 178. 

p. 74, 1. 32. John Kemble. See p. 178. 

p. 74, 1. 37. Pierre, etc. Pierre in Otway's Venice Preserved; 
Coriolanus in Shakespeare's play; Cato in Addison's tragedy of that 
name; Leontes in The Winter's Tale; the Stranger in the play of 
that name translated from the German of Kotzebue (1761-1819), a 
prolific writer whose works number about two hundred. The Stranger 
was a favourite lachrymose drama — the East Lynne of its time — the 

14—2 



212 Notes 

part of Mrs Haller being in the repertory of all the leading emotional 
actresses of the time. Readers of Pendennis will remember that the 
performance of Miss Fotheringay (known off the stage as Miss Emily 
Costigan) in the part of Mrs Haller made havoc in the susceptible 
heart of the youthful Pen. Chapter iv of Pendennis will give as much 
information about The Stranger as anyone, other than a commentator, 
need have. 

p. 75, 1. 2. Ossian's heroes. James Macpherson (1736-1796) 
published two epic poems, Fingal (1762) and Temora (1763) together 
with some shorter pieces, alleged to have been translated from the 
Gaelic of an ancient bard named Ossian. The appearance of these 
poems divided the reading world into two excited classes, those who 
believed that the Ossianic poems were genuine, and those who believed 
that Ossian and his epics were both invented by Macpherson. The 
vague and formless rhapsodies of the pseudo-Ossian find few admirers 
now, but they had much influence in the dawning days of a new 
Romantic period, when people had so far revolted from classical 
formalism as to take The Robbers of Schiller for a great tragedy. These 
are the opening hnes of Fingal, Book iii : "Pleasant are the words of 
the song," said CuthuUin, "lovely the tales of other times! They are 
like the calm dew of the morning on the hill of roes " 

p. 75, 1. 6. Mr Bannister. Jack Bannister (i 760-1 836) is 
immortalised in Lamb's essay On Some of the Old Actors. Hazlitt 
praises his Autolycus, and says generally of him that "his gaiety, 
good humour, cordial feeling, and natural spirits, shone through his 
characters, and lighted them up like a transparency.... Most of his 
characters were exactly fitted for him... and no one else could do them 
so well, because no one else could play Jack Bannister" {Dramatic 
Essays; Works, Vol. viii). 

p. 75, 1. 9. the Prize. By Prince Hoare ^1755-1834), the writer 
of many light pieces for the stage, especially the words of musical 
comedies and operettas. My Grandmother, mentioned lower down in 
the text, is another of his pieces. Prince Hoare wrote the words of 
Shield's excellent song The Arethusa which every lover of the British 
Navy knows or ought to know. 

p. 75, 1. 10. Suett. Dicky Suett (1755-1805), a famous comedian, 
whose memory is preserved for ever in Lamb's On Some of the Old 
Actors. Suett had been a chorister at Westminster Abbey, and not 
(as Lamb says) at St Paul's. Hazlitt calls him "the delightful old 
croaker, the everlasting Dicky Gossip of the stage." 

p. 75, 1. 10. Madame Storace. Anna Storace (1766-1817) was 
a popular opera singer. Her brother Stephen Storace (1763-1796) 
wrote the music of No Song No Supper, a once popular operetta 
with words by Prince Hoare. The Storaces were Italians, and Madame 
Storace never overcame the difficulties of pronunciation in her singing. 

p. 75, 1. II. the Son-in-Law. A comic opera by John O'Keefe 
(1747-1833), a prolific dramatic author. His many pieces include 
The Castle of Andalusia (once very popular), The Wicklow Mountains, 
The Poor Soldier, The Young Quaker and Wild Oats, the last of which 
is the only one that can be said to have survived. The part of Rover 
in it has been played by Sir Charles Wyndham. In Conversations of 
Northcote O'Keefe is referred to as the "English Moliere" ! 



On Actors and Acting. I 213 

p. 75, 1. II. Autolycus. The humorous rascally pedlar in 
The Winter's Tale. 

p. 75, 1. 12. Scrub. A comic serving man in Farquhar's comedy 
The Beaux' Stratagem. 

p. 75, 1. 13. King and Parsons, etc. Thomas King (i 730-1805), 
an actor speciall}' famous as being the original performer of Sir Peter 
Teazle in Sheridan's play The School for Scandal. Hazlitt says of 
his acting that it "left a taste on the palate, sharp and sweet like 
a quince; with an old, hard, rough, withered face, like a John-apple, 
puckered up into a thousand wrinkles... the real amorous wheedling, 
or hasty, choleric, peremptory old gentleman in Sir Peter Teazle and 
Sir Anthony Absolute; and the true, that is, the pretended, clown in 
Ibuchstone, with wit sprouting from, his head like a pair of ass's ears, 
and folly perched on his cap like the horned owl" {Dramatic Essay!;). 
William Parsons (i 736-1 795) is specially praised by Hazlitt for his 
performance of Foresight, the foolish astrologically-minded old man 
in Congreve's Love for Love. James Dodd (1740-1796) is immortalised 
in Lamb's On Some of the Old Actors, in which the most beautiful 
passage is devoted to him. Hazlitt specially praises his Bob Acres. 
John Quick (1748-1831) is described by Hazhtt as an actor "who 
made an excellent self-important, busy, strutting, money-getting 
citizen; or crusty old guardian, in a brown suit and a bob wig." 
John Edwin (i 749-1 790) is merely mentioned and not described in 
Hazlitt' s Dramatic Essays, for the sufficient reason that Hazlitt was 
only twelve years old when Edwin died. 

p. 75, 1. 31. all the world's a stage. As You Like It, Act 11, 
Sc. vii, 1. 139, etc. 

ON ACTORS AND ACTING. II 
Essay 39 in The Round Table. 

p. 76, 1. 4. leaving the world no copy. Twelfth Night, Act 1, 
Sc. v, 1. 261, etc. : 

'Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white 
Nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on: 
Lady, you are the cruellest she alive. 
If you will lead these graces to the grave 
And leave the world no copy, 
p. 76, 1.14. CoUey Gibber's account. Colley Cibber (1671-1757), 
famous as actor, manager and dramatist, and much less admirable 
as the adapter, that is, the mangier, of certain plays of Shakespeare. 
The familiar line. 

Off with his head ! So much for Buckingham ! 
occurs in Cibber's version of Richard III. " Richard's himself 
again!" is another familiar Cibberism. He was the son of the 
sculptor who carved the large rehefs at the base of the Monument. 
His comedies, such as. She Would and She Would Not, Love Makes the 
Man, The Careless Husband and The Double Gallant, are of far less 
importance than his autobiography called the Apology for the Life of 
Colley Cibber, Comedian," a very valuable view of the English stage 
in his day. It is this book to which Hazlitt refers in the present 



214 Notes 

essaj'. Gibber was appointed Poet Laureate in 1730. The curious 
may turn to his Ode for His Majesty's Birthday and the Ode to His 
Majesty for the New Year if they want dehghtf ul specimens of thoroughly 
bad official verse. "Colley Gibber, Sir, (says Johnson), was by no 
means a blockhead ; but by arrogating to himself too much, he was in 
danger of losing that degree of estimation to which he was entitled. 
His friends gave out that he intended his birthday Odes should be 
bad: but that was not the case. Sir; for he kept them many months 
by him, and a few years before he died, he showed me one of them, 
with great solicitude to render it as perfect as might be, and I made 
some corrections, to which he was not very willing to submit." 
Johnson expressed his opinion of Gibber and George II more briefly 
in verse: 

Augustus still sur\'ives in Maro's strain, 
And Spenser's verse prolongs Eliza's reign; 
Great George's acts let tuneful Gibber sing. 
For Nature formed the Poet for the King. 
Gibber, however, deserves gratitude for the firmness with which he 
set his face against the disagreeable foulness that passed for fun on the 
stage in the days of Lord Rake, Sir John Brute and Golonel Bully. 

p. 76, 1. 30. Miss O'Neill. A very famous emotional actress 
(1791-1872) who retired from the stage in 1819 on her marriage to 
WilUam Wrixon Becher. M.P. (afterwards knighted). Hazlitt refers 
to her constantly, and nearly always in praise. One long essay of 
his is devoted almost entirely to her. Here is a t^'pical passage. 
"With all the purity and simpiicit\', Miss O'Neill possessed the utmost 
force of tragedy. Her soul was like the sea, calm, beautiful, smiling, 
smooth, and pelding ; but the storm of adversit}- lashed it into foam, 
laid bare its centre, heaved its billows against the skies. She could 
repose on gentleness, or dissolve in tenderness, and at the same time 
give herself up to all the agonies of woe. She could express fond 
affection, pity, rage, despair, madness." Perhaps the tribute of 
another critic might be quoted: "I've seen the Siddons, sir, and the 
O'Nale," said Captain Costigan of Costiganstown, "they were great, 
but what were they compared to Miss Fotheringay?" 

p. 76, 1. 31. Mrs Siddons. Sarah Kemble (1775-1831) was the 
daughter of Roger Kemble, the manager of a travelling theatrical 
company. Her brother John Kemble is dealt with in an earlier note. 
Like the "Infant Phenomenon" in the Crummies family, Sarah played 
parts in her father's productions from her earhest childhood. She 
married a fellow-actor, William Siddons. whose sole title to fame is 
that he was the husband of so remarkable a woman. Garrick gave 
Mrs Siddons her first London engagement, but she was not very 
successful, and the engagement was not renewed. She continued to 
work hard and earnestly at her art; and when, some years later, she 
appeared again in London, she had so far improved in the technique 
of interpretation, that her success was tremendous, and she reigned, 
for the rest of her career, the great tragedy queen of the English stage. 
It is worth noting that Mrs Siddons, who had spent practically all 
her life on the stage, was twenty-seven before she was acclaimed as a 
great actress — a sufficient rebuke to those who imagine that success 
on the stage is easily won. All who have described the performances 



On Actors and Acting. II 215 

of Mrs Siddons speak of her in terms of the highest admiration. Her 
striking features are famiUar to everyone in Gainsborough's portrait 
(National Galler}') and in Reynolds's "Mrs Siddons as the Iragic Muse " 
fDuke of Wesminster's collection, rcphca at the Dulwich Gallery). 
It is said that when Reynolds signed his name on a border of drapery 
in the picture, he remarked, "Madam, I could not lose the honour this 
opportunity gives me of going down to posterity on the hem of 3'our 
garment." Hazlitt has almost countless references to her in the course 
of his essays. There is a brief but very delightful account of an inter- 
view between Mrs Siddons and Johnson in Boswell under date 1783. 
The stern old moralist records that she behaved with great modesty 
and propriety, and that neither praise nor money, the two great 
corrupters of mankind, seemed to have depraved her. 

p. 77, 1. 7. the British Gallery. The British Institution was 
the precursor of the "Old Masters" exhibitions at the Burlington 
Fine Arts Club and the Roj^al Academy. It was supported by numerous 
amateurs and collectors, and ceased about 1S66. 

p. 77, 1. 13. Betterton and Booth, etc. Some of these stage 
favourites have been dealt with in preceding notes. Thomas Betterton 
(1635-1710) was an actor highly praised by such connoisseurs as Pepys, 
Dryden and Addison. "The best actor in the world," writes Pepys, 
a judge not disposed to give his praise easily. "Then straight to the 
Opera," he records in another place, "and there saw Hamlet, Prince of 
Denmark, done with scenes [i.e. scenery] very well, but above all, 
Betterton did the prince's part beyond imagination." Barton Booth 
(1681-1733) played with Betterton. His greatest part was Cato, in 
Addison's tragedy. Samuel Sandford, James Nokes, Anthony Leigh, 
William Pinkethman, WQham Bullock, Robert Estcourt and Thomas 
Doggett were all famous actors of the Restoration and Queen Anne 
period. Of Sandford, Charles II said that he was "the best villain in 
the world"; though it is probable that the reference is to his per- 
formance of Malignii in The Villain, "a new play made by Tom Porter" 
which young Killigrew commended very highly to Mr Pepys, "as if 
there never had been any such play come upon the stage." For 
Pinkethman (or Penkethman, the spelling is varied) see note below. 
Doggett is best known, not for his dramatic performances, but for his 
institution of the annual race between Thames watermen, the prize being 
"Doggett's Coat and Badge." Elizabeth Barry (1658-1713) is sufficiently 
described lower in the text. Susanna Mountfort was a daughter of Wilham 
Mountfort the actor and dramatist who was murdered by Captain Hill and 
Lord Mohun in 1692 — readers of Esmond will remember the villainous 
Mohun. Anne Oldfield (1683-1730) is familiar to everybody as the 
"Nance Oldfield " of a little play in which Ellen Terry acted dehghtfuUy. 
Anne Bracegirdle (i 663-1 748) was a fascinating actress specially famous 
in the plays of Congreve. Congreve and Rowe both loved her and 
wrote for her, and it was said that they put their own sentiments into 
the mouths of their lovesick characters and set them to plead their 
cause to her. She was the reigning beauty of the day, the tragic 
murder of Mountfort by Hill and INIohun being due to Hill's passion 
for Miss Bracegirdle and his jealousy of the actor. It is said that 
she was married to Congreve, but there is no proof of this. She played 
such Shakespearean parts as Isabella, Portia, Desdemona, Ophelia and 
Cordelia, but seems to have been at her best in the prose comedies of 



2i6 Notes 

Congreve and his contemporaries. If she was anything like Millamant 
she must have been a very dehghtful woman. Mrs Cibber (1714-1766) 
was Susannah Maria Arne, sister of Thomas Augustine Arne, the 
celebrated composer. She married Theophilus Cibber, the son of CoUey. 
Mrs Cibber was famous both as a singer and as an actress. Charles 
Macklin (1697-1797), great alike in tragedy and comedy, was specially 
admired for his performance of Shylock. It was of Macklin's Shylock 
that Pope was alleged to have exclaimed "This is the Jew that 
Shakespeare drew." Frances Abington (i 737-1815) is likely to be 
best remembered for the fine portraits of her painted by Sir Joshua 
Reynolds. She was successively iiower-seller (hence her nickname 
"Nosegay Fan"), street-singer, cook, milUner and actress. 

p. 77, 1. 20. gladdened, life. See p. 189. 

p. 77, 1. 23. our hundred days. A reference to Napoleon's 
dramatic "hundred days" in 1815. The period is usually reckoned 
from March 20 when Napoleon resumed the crown on his arrival in 
Paris, to June 28th when Louis XVIII was once again restored to 
his precarious throne. 

p. 77, 1. 25. Booth's Cato. Addison's play was produced in 1713 
wlien the intrigues of Whigs and Tories at the end of Anne's reign 
caused political feeling to run very high. Addison was a writer on 
the Whig side, and his Cato (a sort of Roman Whig) was regarded as 
a political manifesto. "Some parts of the prologue, which were 
written by Mr Pope, a Tor}' and even a Papist, were hissed, being 
thought to favour of whiggism, but the clap got much the hiss. My 
Lord Harley, who sat in the next box to us, was observed to clap 
as loud as any in the house all the time of the play" (Berkeley to 
Percival, 16 Apr. 1713). 

p. 77, 1. 29. Monimia and Belvidera. Characters in Otway's 
The Orphan and Venice Preserved. 

P- 77> 1- 33- Pinkethman's manner. The reference is to The 
Tatler of June 22, 1710, No. 188. The Tatler, it may be noted, contains 
many interesting references to performances by the actors and actresses 
described in a preceding note. The i88th Tatler thus ends: "I shall 
conclude this paper with a note I have just received from the two 
ingenious friends, Mr Pinkethman and Mr Bullock: 

'Sir, 

'Finding by your Paper, No. 182, that you are drawing parallels 
between the greatest actors of the age ; as you have already begun 
with Mr Wilks and Mr Cibber, we desire you would do the same justice 
to your humble servants, 

'Wm. Bullock and Wm. Pinkethman.' 

For the information of posterity, I shall comply with this letter, and 
set these two great men in such a light as Sallust has placed his Cato 
and Caesar. 

"Mr William Bullock and Mr William Pinkethman are of the same 
age, profession and sex. They both distinguish themselves in a very 
particular manner under the discipline of the crab-tree, with this only 
difference, that Mr Bullock has the more agreeable squall, and Mr 
Pinkethman the more graceful shrug. Pinkethman devours a cold 
chick with great applause; Bullock's talent lies chiefly in asparagus. 



On Actors and Acting. II 217 

Pinkethman is very dexterous at conveying himself under a table; 
Bullock is no less active at jumping over a stick. Mr Pinkethman has 
a great deal of money; but Mr Bullock is the taller man." 

P- 77> 1- 35- Dowton. A favourite actor (1764-1851), who played 
all sorts of characters from Shylock to Lockitt in The Beggar's Opera. 

p. 77, 1. 39 (note). Marriage a la Mode. A comedy by Dryden. 

p. 79, 1. 9. The web of our life, etc. All's Well That Ends 
Well, Act IV, Sc. iii, 11. S3-87; but the original passage has "crimes" 
where Hazlitt puts "vices." 

p. 79, 1. 23. like the giddy sailor. Richard III, Act in, Sc. iv, 
11. 101-103: 

O momentary grace of mortal men. 
Which we more hunt for than the grace of God ! 
Who builds his hopes in air of your good looks. 
Lives like a drunken sailor on a mast, 
Ready, with every nod, to tumble down 
Into the fatal bowels of the deep. 

p. 79, 1. 26. hunks. A miser. The origin of this odd word is 
unknown. 

p. 80, 1. 6. in a neighbouring country. Probably Hazlitt is 
alluding to Voltaire's poem on the death of Adrienne Lecouvreur, the 
famous French actress (1692-1730). The poet scornfully points out 
that, whereas in England Nance Oldfield was buried in Westminster 
Abbey with Marlborough, Newton, Dryden and Addison, in France 
Adrienne Lecouvreur was refused the last rites of religion and accorded 
the burial of a dog. 

p. 80, 1. 8. in our o\wn. It is perhaps necessary to remind 
readers that the respectably high position of actors and actresses in 
contemporary social life is quite a recent development. Until times 
not very long ago the actor, and especially the actress, belonged to a 
dubious half-world on the fringe of society. The character of the 
stage-player, very low at the time of the Restoration, rose steadily 
but imperceptibly to the days of Garrick. Kemble and Mrs Siddons 
were respected. Macready (1793-1873) was perhaps the first actor who 
entered without question into good circles. The Bancrofts made a still 
further advance; and Henry Irving (1838-1905) by his genius and 
personal qualities raised the status of the actor to the greatest possible 
height. In the public mind no distinction was drawn between such 
contemporary men of genius as Irving, Tennyson and Browning, and 
that \iew received exalted confirmation in the knighthood conferred 
upon Irving in 1895, a date that marks the first high official recognition 
of the actor's art as one not necessarily disgraceful and socially disabling. 

p. 80, 1. II. ne plus ultra. The limit beyond which there is 
nothing to be desired. 

p. 80, 1. II. a consunomation, etc. Hamlet, Act in, Sc. i, 1. 63: 
To die, to sleep : 
No more; and by a sleep to say we end 
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks 
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation 
Devoutly to be wished. 



2i8 Notes 

p. 80, 1. 17. The "wine of life, etc. No doubt a confused recollec- 
tion of Macbeth, Act 11, Sc. iii, 1. loo-i : 

The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees 
Is left this vault to brag of. 
p. 80, 1. 20. the vagabond. In Elizabethan times an actor was 
a rogue and vagabond before the law, with the status of vagrant or 
sturdy beggar, unless he was licensed by a peer of the realm or personage 
of higher degree. It is frequently said that our greatest poet, being 
an actor, was therefore a rogue and vagabond. This is quite wrong. 
Shakespeare, like all the other actors of any note in his time, was 
a duly licensed player, and so, a legally respectable person. 

p. 80, 1. 26. Hurried from fierce extremes. Paradise Lost, 11, 
598, etc. : 

Thither, by harpy-footed Furies haled, 
At certain revolutions, all the damned 
Are brought; and feel by turns the bitter change 
Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce. 
From beds of raging fire to starve in ice; 
p. 80, 1. 37. in Gil Bias. The first meeting of Gil Bias with the 
actor Melchior Zapata is related in Book 11, Chapter viii. The transitory 
life of the actor's art is very beautifully described in W. E. Henley's 
Ballade of Dead Actors. Here are two of its stanzas: 
Where are the passions they essayed, 
And where the tears they made to flow? 
Where the wild humours they portrayed 
For laughing worlds to see and know? 
Othello's wrath and Juliet's woe? 
Sir Peter's whims and Timon's gall? 
And Millamant and Romeo? 
Into the night go one and all. 

****** 
The curtain falls, the play is played : 
The Beggar packs beside the Beau ; 
The Monarch troops, and troops the Maid; 
■ The Thunder huddles with the Snow. 
Where are the revellers high and low? 
The clashing swords? The lover's call? 
The dancers gleaming row on row? 
Into the night go one and all. 



ON A LANDSCAPE OF NICOLAS POUSSIN 

Essay xvii in Table Talk. First published in The New Monthly 
Magazine, August, 1821. 

Nicholas Poussin (i 594-1 665), perhaps the most scholarly of 
painters, was born near Les Andelys in Normandy. After studying 
drawing and painting at home and in Paris, he went to Rome where 
he was specially attracted by the art of classical times, and where he 
was so happy and successful, that, with the exception of a three 
years' visit to France (1640-1643), he stayed there for the rest 



On a Landscape of Nicolas Poussin 219 

of his life. Poussin's work is taken chiefly from sacred and 
classical story. He is well represented in England, the National 
Gallery having several fine examples. He must not be confused with 
Gaspard Dughet who was a relative and pupil of Nicholas and assumed 
his master's name. A little sixpenny volume containing sixty repro- 
ductions of Poussin's pictures can be obtained (Gowans and Gray, 
publishers), and should be used by the reader in illustration of this 
essay. Unfortunately Orion is not there, nor is it reproduced in the 
great work on Poussin by Emile Magne. The picture was painted 
in 1658, and passed through several collections till it reached the 
Sanford family, which still retains it, for it is at Corsham Court, Wilts, 
the seat of Lord Methuen. Hazlitt saw it at the British Institution 
in 1821 to which the Rev. J. Sanford had lent it. 

p. 81, 1. I. And blind Orion. Keats, Endymion, 11, 198: 
At this with maddened stare. 
And lifted hands, and trembling lips he stood. 
Like old Deucalion mountained o'er the flood. 
Or bUnd Orion hungry for the morn. 
The Endymion of Keats had been published in 1817, three years before 
this essay appeared. Orion was a magnificent giant and mighty 
hunter. He fell in love with Merope, daughter of Oenopion, but so 
shamefully used the maiden that her father bhnded the giant as he 
lay asleep. It was told Orion that his sight would be restored if he 
let the hght of the rising sun fall upon his eyes. Eos (Aurora), the 
goddess of dawn, was smitten with instant love for him and carried 
him away where he ranged the woods as a hunter with Artemis, the 
goddess of the chase. He was afterwards placed among the constella- 
tions. See below, note on the Pleiades. 

p. 81, 1. 2. Nimrod. See Genesis x, 8, 9: "And Cush begat 
Nimrod : he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty 
hunter before the Lord." 

p. 81, 1. 2. a hunter of shadows. A reference to Odyssey xi, 
in which Odysseus (Ulysses) describes his visit to the world of the 
departed. There, among other wonders, he beheld the spirit of Orion 
driving the beasts he had slain in life — the ghostly hunter driving the 
ghostly herd. 

p. 81, 1. 14. grey dawn, etc. Paradise Lost, vii, 373, etc.: 

the grey 
Dawn and the Pleiades before him danced. 
Shedding sweet influence. 
The Pleiades were seven sisters, daughters of Atlas, and companions 
of Artemis in the chase. They were amorously pursued for .several 
years by Orion till Zeus, hearing their prayers for protection, placed 
them and their pvirsuer among the stars. Orion is the most conspicuous 
constellation in the winter and vernal sky. Near it is the huddled 
little group of the Pleiades. 

p. 81, 1. 21. shadowy sets off. Paradise Lost, v, 43 : 

now reigns 
Full-orbed the moon, and, with more pleasing hght, 
Shadowy sets ofl the face of things. 



220 Notes 

p. 8i, 1. 27. Sir Joshua has done him justice. In the fifth of 
the Discourses on Art. Here is the passage: 

"Poussin hved and conversed with the ancient statues so long, 
that he may be said to have been better acquainted with them than 
with the people who were about him. I have often thought that he 
carried his veneration for them so far as to wish to give his works the 
air of ancient paintings. It is certain he copied some of the antique 
paintings, particularly the Marriage in the Mdobrandini Palace at Rome, 
which I beheve to be the best relic of those remote ages that has yet 
been found. 

No works of any modern have so much of the air of antique painting 
as those of Poussin. His best performances have a remarkable dryness 
of manner, which, though by no means to be recommended for imitation, 
yet seems perfectly correspondent to that ancient simplicity which 
distinguishes his style. Like Polidoro, he studied the ancients so 
much, that he acquired a habit of thinking in their way, and seemed 
to know perfectly the actions and gestures they would use on every 
occasion. 

Poussin in the latter part of his life changed from his dry manner 
to one much softer and richer, where there is a greater union between 
the figures and ground ; as in the Seven Sacraments in the Duke 
of Orleans' collection ; but neither these, nor any of his other pictures 
in this manner, are at all comparable to many in his dry manner which 
we have in England. 

The favourite subjects of Poussin were ancient fables; and no 
painter was ever better qualified to paint such subjects, not only from his 
being eminently skilled in the knowledge of the ceremonies, customs and 
habits of the ancients, but from his being so well acquainted with the 
different characters which those who invented them gave to their 
allegorical figures. Though Rubens has shown great fancy in his 
Satyrs, Silenuses, and Fauns, yet they are not that distinct separate 
class of beings, which is carefully exhibited by the ancients, and by 
Poussin. Certainly when such subjects of antiquity are represented, 
nothing in the picture ought to remind us of modern times. The 
mind is thrown back into antiquity, and nothing ought to be introduced 
that may tend to awaken it from the illusion. 

Poussin seemed to think that the style and the language in which 
such stories are told, is not the worse for preserving some relish of the 
old way of painting, which seemed to give a general uniformity to 
the whole, so that the mind was thrown back into antiquity not only 
by the subject, but the execution. 

If Poussin in imitation of the ancients represents Apollo driving 
his chariot out of the sea by way of representing the sun rising, if he 
personifies lakes and rivers, it is nowise offensive in him ; but seems 
perfectly of a piece with the general air of the picture. On the contrary, 
if the figures which people his pictures had a modern air or countenance, 
if they appeared like our countrymen, if the draperies were like cloth 
or silk of our manufacture, if the landscape had the appearance of a 
modern view, how ridiculous would Apollo appear instead of the 
sun ; an old man, or a nymph with an urn, to represent a river or a 
lake ! " 



On a Landscape of Nicolas Poussin 221 

p. 82, 1. I. denote a foregone conclusion. Othello, Act iii, 
Sc. iii, 1. 428 : 

But this denoted a foregone conclusion, 
p. 82, 1. 7. take up the isles, etc. Isaiah xl, 15: "Behold, 
the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small 
dust of the balance : behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little 
thing." The latter part of Hazlitt's quotation is doubtless a remini- 
scence of t;. 12 in the same chapter: "and weighed the mountains in 
scales and the hills in a balance." 

p. 82, 1. 21. To give us nature such as we have never seen. 
Compare this passage with the oft-quoted lines from Wordsworth's 
Peele Castle stanzas : 

Ah! then, if mine had been the painter's hand, 

To express what then I saw, and add the gleam. 
The light that never was on sea or land, 
The consecration, and the poet's dream, 
I would have planted thee, thou hoary pile, 
Amid a world how different from this ! 
p. 82, 1. 25. high and palmy state. Hamlet, Act i, Sc. i, 1. 113 : 
In the most high and palmy state of Rome, 
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell. 
The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead 
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets, 
p 82, 1. 27. so potent art. Tempest, Act v, Sc. i, 1. 50 : 
graves at my command 
Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth 
By my so potent art. 

p. 82, 1. 34. more than natural. Hamlet, Act 11, Sc. ii, 1. 384: 
"There's something in this more than natural, if philosophy could 
find it out." 

p. 82, 1. 39. gives to airy nothing, etc. A Midsummer Night's 
Dream, Act v, Sc. i, 1. 16: 

And as imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name, 
p. 83, 1. 14. maudlin. Tearfully sentimental — like exaggerated 
representations of the repentant Mary Magdalen. 

p. 83, 1. 26. when Titan, etc. Hyperion the Titan was ruler 
of the sun till those early gods were overthrown and dispossessed. 
The lordship of the Sun then passed to Apollo. See Keats's magnificent 
epic fragment Hyperion. 

p. 84, 1. 8. His Giants. This description would apply to two 
landscapes by Poussin in the Hermitage Gallery, Petrograd. 

p. 84, 1. 12. An infant Bacchus or Jupiter. There is an 
"Education of Bacchus" in the Louvre and another in the National 
Gallery. "The Childhood of Bacchus" is at the Musee Conde, 
Chantilly. Poussin painted two versions of "The Infancy of Jupiter" ; 
one is at Dulwich, the other at the Royal Gallery, Berhn. 



222 Notes 

p. 84, 1. 14. His snakes. There is, for instance, a large snake 
on the rock to the left of his great picture, "The Deluge," and another 
in "The Changing of Aaron's Rod into a Serpent" — both in the Louvre, 
p. 84, 1. 17. his Plague of Athens. The picture that Hazlitt 
probably meant is not "The Plague of Athens," but "The Plague among 
the Philistines at Ashdod," as described in i Samuel v. It is in the 
Louvre, and there is a replica in the National Gallery. There is a 
"Plague of Athens" by Poussin in the Cook collection at Richmond. 

p. 84, 1. 18. His picture of the Deluge. Known also as " Winter." 
It is in the Louvre. 

p. 84, 1.24. o'er-informed, etc. From the character of Shaftesbury 
in Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel: 

A fiery soul, which working out its way, 
Fretted the pygmy body to decay. 
And o'er-informed the tenement of clay. 
"O'er-informed" means "over-filled," so that the spirit was too strong 
for the slight body. 

p. 84, 1. 31, footnote. See his Life lately published. Memoirs of 
the Life of Nicholas Pous'iin (1820) by Mrs Graham, afterwards Lady 
Callcott, whose best-known work, at least by name, is Little Arthur's 
History of England. 

p. 84, 1, 35, footnote. Mr West. Benjamin West (1738-1820) was 
born in Pennsylvania, and, after studying in Italy, settled in London 
where he succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as President of the Royal 
Academy. His work is mostly historical in subject and vast in size. 
He is not now held in very great esteem. See On the Old Age of Artists 
{The Plain Speaker) for an excellent character of West. 

p. 85, 1. 3. the very stones, etc. Macbeth, Act 11, Sc. i, 1. 58 : 
Thou sure and firm-set earth, 
Hear not my steps which way they walk, for fear 
The very stones prate of my whereabout 
And take the present horror from the time 
Which now suits with it. 
p. 85, 1. 7. a picture of Aurora. Probably "Cephalus and 
Aurora" now in the National Gallery. Aurora, or Eos (the Dawn), 
loved the beautiful Tithonus and prayed the gods to grant him eternal 
life. The prayer was answered ; but as Aurora had forgotten to ask 
for the necessary accompaniment of eternal youth, Tithonus withered 
and shrank under the burden of unending years till, as one legend 
says, he was changed into a cricket or grasshopper. 

p. 85, 1. 25. his Nymphs and Fauns, are superior, etc. It may 
be urged that if the Fauns and Bacchantes of Poussin are more 
"intellectual" than those of Rubens, they are, so far, inferior; as 
these fabulous figures are intended to be personifications of the senses, 
not of the mind. 

p. 85, I. 32. Leaping like -wanton kids. Spenser, Faerie Queene, 
Bk I, Canto vi. Stanza 14. A troop of Fauns and Satyrs surround Una: 
And all the way their merry pipes they sound 
That all the woods with doubled echo ring; 
And with their horndd feet do wear the ground. 
Leaping like wanton Idds in pleasant Spring. 



On a Landscape of Nicolas Poussin 223 

p. 86, 1. I. at Blenheim. The great Duke of Marlborough was 
an admirer of Rubens, and the grateful cities of the Netherlands pre- 
sented him with many fine examples, which, with his own purchases, 
went to form the best collection of Rubens in the possession of any one 
person. The pictures, some twenty in number, belonging for the most 
part to the master's best period, were mainly Scriptural in subject, 
only one, or perhaps two, being " Bacchanalian" in the sense of Hazlitt's 
remark. The great collection was dispersed at Christie's in 1886, 
with the rest of the Blenheim art treasures. Hazlitt refers elsewhere 
to these pictures, and gives them more detailed notice in his Sketches 
of the Principal Picture Galleries in England. 

p. 86, 1. 5. his picture of Apollo. " The Inspiration of Anacreon " 
at Dulwich, or "The Inspiration of the Poet" at the Louvre. Apollo 
is figured in both. 

p. 86, 1. 7. the figxire of a nymph. The figure on the left of the 
picture "A Bacchanalian Dance" in the National Gallery. 

p. 86, 1. 10. his picture of the shepherds. "The Shepherds 
of Arcadia" in the Louvre — the most popular of Poussin's pictures. 

p. 86, 1. II. Vale of Tempe. A romantic glen in Thessaly often 
celebrated by the Greek poets. "Et ego, etc." — "And I too have 
dwelt in Arcadia." 

p. 86, 1. 16. the valleys low, etc. Lycidas, 136, etc. : 
Ye valleys low where the mild whispers use 
Of shades and wanton winds and gushing brooks, 
p. 86, 1. 23. within the book and volume, etc. Hamlet, Act i, 
Sc. V, 1. 103 : 

And thy commandment all alone shall live 
Within the book and volume of my brain. 
Unmixed with baser matter. 
p. 86, 1. 27. the sober certainty, etc. Comtis, 263 : 
But such a sacred and home-felt delight. 
Such sober certainty of waking bliss, 
I never heard till now. 
p. 86, 1. 30. he who knows of these delights, etc. Adapted 
from Milton's sonnet to "Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son" : 
He who of these delights can judge, and spare 
To interpose them oft, is not unwise. 
p. 86, I. 35. embrowned the walls. "Embrowned" because 
time has lent a sober darkening to the colours of many great pictures, 
p. 86, 1. 36. Poussin has repeated this subject. Another 
version is the "Shepherds of Arcadia" in the Duke of Devonshire's 
collection. 

p. 87, 1. 6. the names the same. Most of the painters here 
mentioned have been dealt with in earlier notes, which need not be 
repeated here. The Carracci. There were three painters of this 
name, forming a school. The founder was Ludovico (1555-1619), 
and he was assisted by two nephews, Agostino {1557-1602) and Anni- 
bale (1560-1609). Annibale was the most prolific of the three. The 
Carracci (like Naldo in George Eliot's Stradivarius) were painters 



224 Notes 

of the "eclectic school," that is, they had no original vision or view of 
things, but selected for imitation all the most popular mannerisms of 
their famous predecessors. Their elaborate and showy works (mostly 
classical or Scriptural in subject), once highly praised, are now but 
slightly esteemed. 

p. 87, 1. 19. Old Genius the porter, etc. Spenser, FaeneQueene, 
Bk III, Cant, vi, stan. 31 and 32: 

Old Genius the porter of them was, 
Old Genius the which a double nature has. 
He letteth in, he letteth out to wend 
All that to come into the world desires. 

p. 87, 1. 27. Pictures are scattered. A reminiscence of Words- 
worth's Stray Pleasures. See p. 206. 

p. 87, 1. 31. the collections at Blenheim, etc. All these are 
described in Hazlitt's Sketches of the Principal Picture Galleries in 
England. The collection of John Julius Angerstein is specially 
interesting, because, after his death, twenty-nine of his pictures were 
bought by the nation for /6o,ooo, to form the nucleus of a National 
Gallery. The collection was opened to the public in 1824 at Angerstein's 
house "in Pall Mall. 

p. 87, 1. 37. since the Louvre is stripped. Napoleon, in the 
course of his campaigns, especially the Italian campaign, had sedulously 
collected works of art and sent them to France. Many of these were 
restored after 1815. See the following essays. The "Iron Crown" 
is taken by Hazlitt as a symbol of Napoleon's career as a conqueror. 
The "Iron Crown" is the ancient regal emblem of Lombardy and is 
preserved at Monza, near Milan. Inside the gold circlet is a narrow 
band of iron said to have been beaten out of one of the nails used at 
the Crucifixion. According to legend, St Helena, mother of Constan- 
tine the Great, discovered the buried Cross at Jerusalem in 326 and 
gave one of the nails to her son. Queen Theudelinda, who converted 
the Lombards to Christianity in 600, is supposed to have incorporated 
the sacred relic into the Lombard crown. See George Meredith's 
fervid poem the Song of Theodelinda. Napoleon was crowned with 
this ancient circlet of the Lombard Kings in 1805. He died in 1821, 
shortly before the present essay was written, with his glory, as it 
seemed, in total eclipse. 



ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING. I 

Table Talk, Essay i. First published in The London Magazine, 
December, 1820. 

p. 88, 1. I. There is a pleasure, etc. The original source of 
this quotation is Dryden's Spanish Friar, Act ii, Sc. i: 
There is a pleasure sure 
In being mad, which none but madmen know. 
But Cowper's variation (The Task, Bk 11) is better known: 
There is a pleasure in poetic pains 
Which only poets know. 



On the Pleasure of Painting. I 225 

p. 88, 1. II. no juggling here. This quotation is possibly a 
confused reminiscence of two passages in Hamlet: 
but 'tis not so above; 
There is no shuffling, there the action lies 
In his true nature " (in, iii, 61) 

and, 

How came he dead? I'll not be juggled with! 

(IV, V, 130). 
Possibly a passage of Troilus and Cressida (11, iii, 77) may have contri- 
buted to the phrase : 

"Here is such patchery, such jugghng, and such knavery!" 
p. 88, 1. 16. study with joy, etc. Cowper, The Task, in, 227- 
228: 

The mind, indeed, enlightened from above. 
Views Him in all ; ascribes to the grand cause 
The grand effect; acknowledges with joy 
His manner, and with rapture tastes His style, 
p. 88, 1. 19. you learn something every moment. Compare 
with this paragraph a passage in Browning's Fra Lippo Lippi: 
For, don't you mark, we're made so that we love 
First when we see them painted, things we have passed 
Perhaps a hundred times, nor cared to see; 
And so they are better, painted — better to us. 
Which is the same thing. Art was given for that — 
God uses us to help each other so. 
Lending our minds out. Have you noticed, now. 
Your cuUion's hanging face? A bit of chalk. 
And trust me but you should, though ! How much more, 
If I drew higher things with the same truth ! 
p. 89, 1. 16. more tedious, etc. i^jMg'/oAw, Actiii, Sc. iv, 11. 108-9 : 
Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale 
Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man. 
p. 89, 1. 20. Werther. Goethe's sentimental, not to say maudlin, 
story was published in 1774. The quoted passage is taken from 
Letter VIII. 

p. 90, 1. 8. My mind to me, etc. A poem by Sir Edward Dyer 
(i530?-i607): 

My mind to me a kingdom is, 

Such present joys therein I find. 
That it excels all other bliss 

That earth affords or grows by kind : 
Though much I want which most would have. 
Yet still my mind forbids to crave, 
p. 90, 1. 9. to set a throne, etc. Bacon, Advancement of Learning, 
Bk i: "But the commandment of knowledge is yet higher than the 
commandment over the will ; for it is a commandment over the reason, 
belief, and understanding of man, which is the highest part of the 
mind, and giveth law to the will itself : for there is no power on earth 
which setteth up a throne, or chair of state, in the spirits or souls of 
men, and in their cogitations, imaginations, opinions, and beliefs, but 
knowledge and learning." 

S. H. 15 



226 Notes 

p. 90, 1. 13. Pure in the last recesses, etc. Dryden's translation 
of the Second Satire of Persius : 

A soul, where laws both human and divine, 

In practice more than speculation shine: 

A genuine virtue, of a vigorous kind, 

Pure in the last recesses of the mind: 

When with such offerings to the Gods I come, 

A cake, thus given, is worth a hecatomb. 

p. 91, 1. 5. palpable to feeling. Perhaps from Othello, Act i, 
Sc. ii, 1. 76: 

'Tis probable and palpable to thinking. 

p. 91, 1. 14. this nairacle of Rubens' pencil. The landscapes 
of Ilubens are a specially important part of his work. The National 
Gallerj' has two excellent examples. One famous "Rainbow Land- 
scape" of Rubens is in the Pinakothek, Munich, and another in the 
Wallace Collection, London; but Hazlitt plainly refers to the one in 
the Louvre. 

p. 91, 1. 17. Rembrandt's landscapes. The landscapes of 
Rembrandt are among the greatest in that kind. A specially fine 
example is "The Mill," formerly at Bowood, in the possession of the 
Marquess of Lansdowne, but recently sold, and now in America. Other 
good examples are in the Northbrook and Westminster collections. 
A very impressive landscape by Rembrandt is the etching generally 
known as "The Three Trees." 

p. 91, 1. 19. light thickened. Macbeth, Act iii, Sc. ii, 1. 50: 

Light thickens; and the crow 
Makes wing to the rooky wood : 
Good things of day begin to droop and drow.se; 
Whiles night's black agents to their preys do rouse, 
p. 91, 1. 24. Wilson. Richard Wilson (1714-1782), a great 
landscape painter, was born in Montgomeryshire, and studied in 
London. He began his career as a portrait painter, but during a visit 
to Italy, turned his attention to landscape. He was never successful 
in the worldly sense and passed most of his life in poverty. Circum- 
stances brightened a little towards the end, when a legacy enabled 
him to retire to Llanberis, where he died. Wilson's admirable work 
has steadily increased in favour among capable judges. He is well 
represented in the National Gallery and South Kensington. 

p. 91, 1. 37. Claude. See p. 171. Claude was tireless in sketching 
the natural effects of form and light noticed in his rambles. 

p. 92, 1. II. an old vroman. This picture is in the museum at 
Maidstone. 

p. 92, 1. 26. an old head by Rembrandt. Possibly the portrait 
of the Countess of Desmond, still at Burghley House in the possession 
of the Marquess of Exeter. It should be noted that modern criticism 
does not accept as genuine any of the alleged Rembrandts at Burghley. 

p. 92, 1. 33. with Sir Joshua. In an essay contributed to The 
Idler (No. 82), the third of three excellent papers by him in that 
periodical, Reynolds had written thus: "If it has been proved that 
the painter, by attending to the invariable and general ideas of nature, 



On the Pleasure of Painting. I 227 

produces beauty, he must, by regarding minute particularities... 
deviate from the universal rule, and pollute his canvas with deformity." 
This was the concluding sentence, and it is said that the last six words 
were added by Johnson. Hazlitt criticises the pronouncement very 
elaborately in Essay xiv of Table Talk — the second of two papers 
dealing with Sir Joshua's Discourses on Art, in which the Idler essays 
were reprinted. The third and fourth discourses of Reynolds deal 
specially with this question of the general and particular in art. Thus 
in the fourth he writes: "The usual and most dangerous error is on 
the side of minuteness; and therefore I think caution most necessary 
where most have failed. The general idea constitutes real excellence. 
All smaller things, however perfect in their way, are to be sacrificed 
without mercy to the greater." On this point we might observe that 
much depends on the painter's aim. An artist like Turner who, in 
his later work, sought to reproduce luminosity of elfect rather than to 
represent objects, would plainly have no need to bother about 
"minute particulars." But it is quite possible to combine perfection 
of detail with all the breadth of a grand style. The Van Eycks are 
triumphant examples of this. Nothing could be nobler in its" general 
effect than the great Ghent altarpiece "The Adoration of the Lamb"; 
yet the elaboration of detail extends to exquisitely painted little 
blossoms almost hidden in the grass of the foreground, and even to the 
exact rendering of lines and callosities on the upturned feet of the 
group of kneeling pilgrims. The head of the donor in John van Eyck's 
Virgin and Child (Bruges Museum) is very possibly the most wonderful 
rendering in the world of an old man's face; yet what the eye first 
sees is the deeply religious effect of the whole picture. The details 
do not detract from the breadth of conception and force of style; 
they give a separate and superadded pleasure. 

p. 92, 1. 40. chiaro scuro. An Italian word meaning literally the 
"clear-obscure" or the "light-dark"; it is technically used to mean 
the blending of light and .shade in art — the rendering of light in darkness 
and darkness in light. Rembrandt is the most obvious master of 
chiaroscuro. 

p. 93, 1. 30. as in a glass darkly, i Corinthians, xiii, 12. 

p. 93, 1. 32. sees into the life of things. Wordsworth's, Tiniern 
Abbey lines, 1. 49: 

While with an eye made quiet by the power 
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy. 
We see into the life of things. 

P- 93. 1. 39- the perishable vehicle. The "vehicle" in painting 
is the liquid in which the pigments are mixed so that they can be brushed 
on the canvas. The usual vehicle is oil — hence the term " oil painting." 
In the old kind of painting called "tempera" the vehicle was white 
of egg. The use of oil as a vehicle is traditionall}?- supposed to have 
been the invention of Hubert and John van Eyck (i37o?-i426 and 
1389-1440). How perishable some of the English vehicles (and pig- 
ments) have been may be seen in a comparison of the many ruined 
pictures by Romney and Reynolds with the unfaded freshness of pictures 
by Memlinc and the Van Eycks, painted three hundred and fifty years 
earlier. 

15—2 



228 Notes 

p. 94, 1. 5. Jan Steen. Jan Steen (1626-1679), son of a Dutch 
brewer and himself in the same hne of business, was appropriately the 
typical painter of jovial and carousing scenes. The National Gallery 
has several examples. Gerard Dow (1613-1675), another Dutch painter, 
is also famous for his "interiors." 

p. 94, 1. 6. casuist. A casuist is, so to speak, a lawyer of the 
conscience, one who determines the line of conduct to be followed in 
difficult cases where the claims of various obligations come into conflict. 
It will be easily understood that casuistry generally involved a great 
deal of hair-splitting. 

p. 94, 1. 8. mist, the common gloss, etc. Paradise Lost, v, 
435. etc.: 

So down they sat. 
And to their viands fell; nor seemingly 
The Angel, nor in mist — the common gloss 
Of theologians — but with keen dispatch 
Of real hunger. 

p. 94, 1, 23. Opie. John Opie (1761-1807), a poor carpenter's 
son at Truro, where his talents were discovered by Peter Pindar (see 
p. 178) who helped him to become a successful painter. Opie's work is 
less admired than it was. He is one of the several painters to whom 
is attributed the famous reply to the question what he mixed his 
colours with — "With brains. Sir!" 

p. 94, 1. 31. Richardson. Jonathan Richardson (1665-1745) was 
famous both as a portrait painter and as a writer on art. His sound 
work as a portraitist can be studied in the National Portrait Gallery, 
which has some half dozen of his pictures, including portraits of Pope, 
Prior, Steele and himself. His literary works. The Theory of Painting, 
The Connoisseur, an Essay on the whole Art of Criticism as it relates 
to Painting and An Account of some of the Statues, Bas-Reliefs, Drawings 
and Paintings in Italy, are still deserving of attention by amateurs of 
art. Hazlitt quotes from him in the next essay. The original source 
of the story about Michael Angelo and Julius H is the famous Lives 
of the Best Painters, Architects and Sculptors written by Giorgio Vasari 
(1511-74). 

P- 95. 1-33 Andrea del Sarto. A Florentine painter (1486-153 1), 
whose " Portrait of a Sculptor" (erroneously called a portrait of himself) 
in the National Gallery is a well-known and popular picture. Hazhtt's 
choice of him as an example of "slow, patient, laborious execution" 
is not very happy, as Andrea was in fact a brilliant and rapid workman, 
whose mastery of technique earned him the title of "the faultless 
painter." 

p. 95, 1. 36. That you might alnnost say, etc. Donne, The 
Second Anniversary, 1. 246: 

her pure and eloquent blood 
Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought. 
That one might almost say, her body thought. 

p. 96, 1. 16. Abraham Tucker. Abraham Tucker (1705-1774), 
the author of The Light of Nature Purszted, lived near Dorking. His 
book extended to no less than seven volumes, four of which he published 
in 1768 under the pseudonym " Edward Search " ; the other three, edited 



On the Pleasure of Painting. I 229 

by his daughter, appeared posthumously in 1778. Tucker's book 
has an interest for students of HazUtt, for he compiled an abridgement 
of it in a single volume (published 1807) and wrote a long preface 
which is one of the earliest pieces in which his characteristic qualities 
appear. The book itself may be described as a rambling philosophical 
treatise on things in general, written by a man of unusual common- 
sense and clear-headed understanding. Hazlitt says, " To the ingenuity 
and closeness of the metaphysician he unites the principal knowledge of 
the man of the world, and the utmost sprightliness, and even levity 
of imagination." 

p. 96, 1. 38. rich impasting. "Impaste" in painting is the 
laying on of colour very thickly. 

p. 97, 1. 2. Shaftesbury's Characteristics. Anthony Ashley 
Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713), a philosophical Whig 
peer, wrote several essays or disquisitions collected under the general 
title Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions and Times. Shaftes- 
bury had some free-thinking tendencies and drew upon himself many 
attacks, the most notable being the Alciphron of Berkeley. Lamb 
takes him as an extreme example of the "genteel style" in writing. 
Shaftesbury has been rather unfairly estimated, most people being 
content to take their view of him from his reUgious opponents. He 
was before his time, and, in fact, there is much in Characteristics that 
a modern reader may sincerely admire as anticipative of contemporary 
ideas. The Baskerville edition of Characteristics has a finely etched 
frontispiece and title page by Gribelin, for whom see p. 249. 

P- 97. 1- 5- riches fineless. "Infinite wealth." a phrase from 
Othello, Act III, Sc. iii, 1. 173: 

Poor and content is rich and rich enough. 
But riches fineless is as poor as winter 
To him that ever fears he shall be poor. 

p. 97,1. 16. ever in the haunch, etc. 2 Henry IV, Act iv, Sc. iv, 
1. 92: 

thou art a summer bird, 
Wliich ever in the haunch of winter sings 
The lifting up of day. 

p. 97, 1. 25. with Correggio. Many traditional stories exist 
about the poverty, timidity and modest self-distrust of Correggio. 
Modern research has tended to destroy these legends. 

p. 97, 1. 31. to the Exhibition. Hazlitt's portrait of his father 
was hung in the Royal Academy exhibition of 1806. 

p. 97, 1. 32. Mr Skeffington. Sir Lumley St George Skeffington 
( 1 771-1850), a "buck" of the Regency period, wrote several plays of 
no importance. He was a well known and much caricatured figure 
in the Society of his time, and is said to have been consulted by the 
Regent in important matters of dress. 

P- 97. 1- 37- the battle of Austerlitz. Dec. 2, 1805. Hazlitt, 
the ardent Napoleonist, was naturally as uplifted by his hero's victory 
over the Austrians and Russians as he was afterwards saddened by 
Waterloo and St Helena. 

p. 98, 1. I. the great Platonic year. Plato's year is the 
mythical period in which the heavenly bodies will have completed as 



230 Notes 

many revolutions as will bring them all back to the same relative posi- 
tions that they held at the beginning of time. To use a simple 
explanation, it is the "least common multiple" of all the different 
planetary and celestial " years," and it was estimated at anything from 
12,000 to 365,000 terrestrial years. The new era begun when this 
"year of years" was completed would reproduce the past in every 
particular. See Plato's Timaeus, 38, for the passage describing this 
"year" (Jowett's translation. Vol. iii, p. 457). 

p. 98, 1. 6. full of years. Hazlitt's father died in 1820 aged 83. 
His mother was over yo at her death. 



ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING. II 

Essay II of Table-Talk. 

p. 99, 1. 4. Whate'er Lorraine, etc. Thomson, The Castle of 
Indolence, Canto i, Stanza 38. "Savage Rosa" is Salvator Rosa 
(1615-1673), a painter whose melodramatic representations of wild 
landscapes were much admired in the "Romantic" period of Hazlitt's 
youth. Salvator was a man of many accomplishments, and won fame 
as poet and musician. 

p. 99, 1. 8. Lord Radnor's park, etc. Longford Castle, Wiltshire, 
where there is an admirable collection of paintings. The Radnor 
Claudes are a pair. One represents the landing of Aeneas in Italy 
at sunrise, and is an allegory of Rome in its uprising. The other shows 
a ruined arch and aqueduct in a pastoral landscape, and is an allegory 
of Rome decayed and fallen. They were shown a few years ago at 
an "Old Masters" exhibition at the Royal Academy. Van Dyck's 
portrait of the Herbert family hangs in the Great Room at Wilton for 
which it was painted and from which it has never been moved. For 
the Blenheim Rubens see p. 223. The Van Dyck there was a por- 
trait of the Duchess of Buckingham with her three children looking 
at a miniature— presumably of the assassinated Duke. Rembrandt's 
"Belshazzar's Feasft" is still in the possession of Lord Derby at 
Knowsley. It was shown at the Rembrandt "Old Masters" exhibition 
of 1899. Burghley House, near Stamford, the famous residence of 
Lord Exeter, still has its large collection of Guide's sentimental saints. 

p. 99, 1. 17. bosomed high, etc. L' Allegro, 1. 78: 
Towers and battlements he sees 
Bosomed high in tufted trees. 

p. 100, 1. 2. the Orleans Gallery. Phihppe, Duke of Orleans 
(1674-1723), the Regent of France on the death of Louis XIV, amassed 
a vast and wonderful collection of important pictures, in number 
nearly five hundred, including, for instance, 27 assigned to Titian, 
19 to Rubens, 12 to Van Dyck and 7 to Rembrandt. Even with the 
deductions made for too optimistic attributions, the Orleans collection 
was by far the greatest in the possession of any one person. The 
strange adventures of the collection began with the death of the founder. 
His son Louis was a fanatic, and, disapproving of some Correggios, 
he cut off their heads, and burned them. The son of Louis was the 
notorious Philippe £galit6 oi the Revolution (1747-1793). The Orleans 



On the Pleasure of Painting. II 231 

collection did not interest him and he sold the pictures in 1792 for 
a mere fraction of their value. The best of them were bought by a 
Belgian banker, and a large number by an English collector, Mr Thomas 
Moor Slade. A patriotic Frenchman, angry at seeing the pictures lost 
to France, bought back the Belgian purchase ; but during the Terror, 
he fled to England and carried the pictures with him. Finding himself 
without means, he sold his Orleans purchase to an English dealer. From 
him they were bought by three English noblemen acting in concert, the 
Duke of Bridgewater, the Marquis of Stafford and the Earl of Carlisle. 
The pictures were catalogued and exhibited for public sale from 
December, 1798, to August, 1799- It was then that Hazlitt saw them. 
In the end, the best of the pictures were kept by the noble purchasers 
who, however, got for the rest at least as much as they had paid for 
the original collection. 

p. 100, 1. 8. hands that the rod, etc. Gray's Elegy. 
p. 100, 1. 9. a forked mountain. Antony and Cleopatra, Act iv, 
Sc. xiv, 1. 5, etc.: 

Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish; 
A vapour sometimes like a bear or lion. 
A towered citadel, a pendent rock, 
A forked mountain, or blue promontory 
With trees upon't, that nod unto the world. 
And mock our eyes with air. 
p. 100, 1. 20. signifying nothing. Macbeth, Act v, Sc. v, 1. 28: 
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player 
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage 
And then is heard no more : it is a tale 
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. 
Signifying nothing. 
p. 100, 1. 25. the Provoked Husband. A comedy by Vanbrugh 
left incomplete, and finished by CoUey Gibber. 

p. 100, 1. 27. RuysC 1 und Hobbima. Two admirable Dutch 

landscape artists. Jacob van Ruisdael (1628 or 9-1682) is well repre- 
sented in the National Gallery, where his peaceful landscape scenes 
with their characteristic silvery tones are general favourites. Meindert 
Hobbema (1638-1709) painted excellent landscapes during a very short 
period of liis life. His "Avenue of Middelharnis " in the National 
Gallery is one of the most popular, as it is one of the most delightful, 
among landscape pictures. 

p. 100, 1. 33. when I went to the Louvre. In October, 1802. 
p. 100, 1. 38. Titian's Mistress, etc. See p. 197. In this picture 
the beautiful Laura is seen twisting a tress of golden hair before a 
mirror. Alfonso is dimly descried in the background. "A Young 
Nobleman with a Glove" is the familiar and splendid "L'homme au 
gant," one of Titian's finest portrait pictures. The "companion to it" 
is possibly Titian's "Francis I of France" which hangs near it in the 
famous "Salon Carr6" of the Louvre. 

p. loi, 1. 8. the Transfiguration. By Raphael. This great 
picture, Raphael's last work, was part of the loot gathered by Napoleon 
in his Italian campaign. It was brought to Paris in 1797 and returned 
to Rome in 1815. It is now in the Vatican. 



232 Notes 

p. loi, 1. 19. where Rubens hung out, etc. Marie de' Medici, 
widow of Henri IV, ordered eighteen large paintings from Rubens to 
decorate the Luxembourg Palace. They were planned by the master, and 
largely executed by his pupils, with finishing touches from his own hands. 
They now hang in a hail of the Louvre specially arranged for them. 

p. loi, 1. 23. un beau jour. Doubtless a reference to the famous 
description by Bailly of the 6th October, 1789, when, after what is 
known as the "insurrection of women," Louis XVI was brought by 
compulsion from Versailles to Paris where he would be under the eye 
of the National Assembly. Burke is very indignant about Bailly 's 
"beau jour." 

p. loi, 1. 29. the Transfiguration, the St Peter, etc. For the 
"Transfiguration" see note above. Titian's "St Peter Martyr," 
another of Napoleon's captures, was given back to Venice in 1815. 
It was destroyed by fire in 1867. His portrait of Cardinal Ippolito 
de' Medici is now in Florence whence Napoleon had taken it. Domeni- 
cliino's "Communion of St Jerome," one of his best works, was given 
back to Rome and is now in the Vatican. 

p. loi, 1. 38. if thou hast not seen the Louvre, etc. A remi- 
niscence of As You Like It, Act iii, Sc. ii, I. 35, etc. : 

Touchstone. Wast ever in court, shepherd? 

Covin. No, truly. 

T. Then thou art damned. 

C. Nay, I hope. 

T. Truly, thou art damned like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side. 

p. 102, 1. 3. the Elgin marbles. Many sculptures, architectural 
fragments and casts of the highest value from Athens, Mycaenae 
and elsewhere, brought from Greece in 1812 by Lord Elgin (1766-1841), 
the British Ambassador to the Porte. These irreplaceable works of 
art were gradually being destroyed, and, to save them. Lord Elgin 
obtained permission from the indifferent Turks for their removal. In 
18 16 the British government bought the collection, which is now housed 
in the British Museum. There, such great works as " The Dew Maidens " 
(or "Three Fates") and the "Ilyssus," have long been familiar and 
admired figures. The purchase aroused great controversy, in which 
the experts were utterly in the wrong. One of Hazlitt's essays deals 
with the Elgin marbles. 

p. 102, 1. 5. Quatreheures, etc. " Past four o'clock ; it is closing 
time, citizens." 

p. 102, 1. 9. hard money. Doubtless a reminiscence of Farquhar's 
The Recruiting Officer, Act iv, Sc. iii: "Your mother has a hundred 
pound in hard money Ipng at this minute in the hands of a mercer 
not forty yards from this place." "Hard money" is cash, as distin- 
guished from paper money. "Hard cash" is a familiar modern phrase. 

p. 102, 1. 10. thou tenantless m£insion. Tenantless, through the 
restoration of many famous pictures. 

p. 102, 1. 16. experimentum crucis. A crucial or decisive 
experiment. 

p. 102, 1. 17. number numberless. Paradise Regained, iii, 310: 
He looked, and saw what numbers numberless 
The city gates outpoured. 



On the Pleasure of Painting. II 233 

"Numbers numberless" visited France after the Peace of Amiens 
in 1802, the first real breathing space since the outbreak of war in i793- 

p. 102, 1. 27. casual fruition. Paradise Lost, Bk iv, 1. 766. 

p. 102, 1. 38. Knowledge is pleasure as well as power. Hazlitt 
has the same sentence in his Round Table essay On Imitation. Com- 
pare Newman, University Teaching, Discourse v, par. 6: "Knowledge, 
indeed, when thus exalted into a scientific form, is also power.... 
Poubtless;...! only say that, prior to its being a power, it is a good; 
that it is, not only an instrument, but an end." 

p. 103, 1. 25. W. Richard Wilson, or possibly Sir David Wilkie. 

p. 103, 1. 26. Dutch cabinet picture. A cabinet picture is so 
called because it is intended to be hung in a private room, and not 
in a Church or public institution. The Dutch were among the first 
to produce paintings for domestic use. 

p. 104, 1. II. a friend of mine, Northcote, for whom see p. 176. 
The important work was no doubt his Memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 
published in 181 3 and praised in The Edinburgh Review. 

p. 104, 1. 29. A friend had bought. It is suggested that this 
was Haydon. It might have been Lamb. 

p. 105. 1. 36. Richardson. See p. 228. The instances he quotes 
are drawn mainly from Vasari. 

p. 106, 1. 18. Tvho restored Painting. This high view of Annibale 
Carracci is not now held. See p. 223. 

p. 107, 1. 3. missed a Cardinal's hat. Vasari is the authority 
for the statement that Pope Leo X intended to bestow a Red Hat 
on Raphael. 

p. 107, 1. c). Parmigiano. Francesco Maria Mazzola, called 
Parmigiano from Parma, his birthplace. 

p. 108, 1. 10. Gandy. Wilham Gandy, portrait painter, was born 
in the latter half of the seventeenth century. He was the son of 
James Gandy, a portrait painter of Exeter, who was said to have been 
a pupil of Van Dyck. William Gandy lived at Exeter and seems to 
have spent the whole of his life in Devonshire. He died in 171 5. 
Reynolds was also a Devon man. 

p. 108, 1. 21. Dcin Stringer. Daniel Stringer studied in the Royal 
Academy about 1770. He has been praised for his portrait heads and 
comic sketches; but he lacked application, and seems gradually to 
have abandoned art. For further references to Gandy and Stringer 
see Conversations of Northcote. 

p. 108, 1. 29. swallowing the tailor's news. King John, Act iv, 
Sc. ii, 1. 195: 

I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus. 
The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool. 
With open mouth swallowing a tailor's news. 

p. 108, 1. 29. bastEirds of his genius. Perhaps a reminiscence 
of Shakespeare's A Lover's Complaint, 174 — 5, lines descriptive of one 
who 

Thought characters and words merely but art. 
And bastards of his foul adulterate heart. 



234 Notes 



THE FIGHT 

Published in The New Monthly Magazine, 1822, and not included by 
Hazlitt in any collection of his essays. It was republished in Literary 
Remains and Wmterslow. So many heroes of the Ring are referred to 
in the piece that a general note covering all of them may be given 
at once. Quotations not otherwise described are taken from Pierce 
Egan's Boxiana. 

Jack Randall, "the Prime Irish Lad otherwise the Nonpareil," 
was the best light-weight of his day. In one of his combats, that 
with "West-country Dick" in 1817, he fought twenty-nine rounds 
and left the ring without a mark on his face. One of his severest 
battles was fought with Ned Turner, another light-weight, a London 
Welshman, as Randall was a London Irishman. After thirty-five 
rounds the Welshman failed to come up. Randall retired in the height 
of his fame and took "Ihe Hole in the Wall" public house in Chancery 
Lane, which thereafter became a regular place of call for the Fancy. 
Ned Turner, though defeated by Randall, was an accomplished 
fighter. His most terrible "mill" was that with Curtis in 1816, which 
lasted for sixty-eight rounds and terminated fatally, for the defeated 
Curtis died after leaving the Ring. Turner received many compliments 
at his trial, though he was found technically guilty of manslaughter 
and sentenced to imprisonment for two months. He was also promi- 
nent in another light, that with the "All-conquering Scroggins." 
Jack Scroggins, whose real name was John Palmer, had served in 
the Royal Navy, and apparently had spent his time in fighting, not the 
enemy, but his own shipmates. His success in these friendly combats led 
him to the Prize Ring where "little Scroggy," in spite of an unorthodox 
style, soon gained much renown among amateurs of the Fancy. For 
a long time he was unbeaten; but a quarrel having arisen between 
him and Turner, the matter went to the Ring. The first fight (March, 
1817) was interrupted, but in the second, a few weeks later, "the 
invincible Scroggy," the "little Napoleon of the Ring," met his Waterloo. 
A third contest confirmed the supremacy of Turner. Scroggins, it 
may be observed, had taken to drink and refused to train. Hence 
his downfall. Tom Belcher, brother of the more celebrated Jem, 
was victor in eight out of twelve big contests in the Ring. " As a sparrer 
Tom is truly distinguished, and exhibits all the various traits of the 
art with the utmost elegance and perfection ; and who has turned out 
a number of very expert and scientific pupils. In several of the 
principal towns of the kingdom Tom has pourtrayed the utility of the 
Science of Self Defence with considerable respectabihty and attention ; 
and is in height about five feet nine inches, weight near eleven stone 
— his appearance much of the gentleman, and his manners and deport- 
ment are of that mild and inoffensive nature well calculated to prepossess 
the stranger much in his favour." Jack Martin, "the Baker," was 
an active fighter of light to middle weight. He was called "The 
Master of the Rolls" in allusion to his trade. Bill Richmond was a 
"gentleman of colour" born in America. He was about five feet 
ten and fought at fourteen stone. He was discovered by General 
Earl Percy (afterwards Duke of Northumberland) during the American 



The Fight 235 

War of Independence, and brought to England, where he presently 
took to the Ring. Unlike certain other coloured pugihsts, Richmond 
was "inteUigent, communicative and well-behaved." Bill Matthews, 
a bookbinder, distinguished himself in a big drawn fight \vith another 
coloured pugiUst "Black George." Tom Cribb, the Champion of 
England, was a Gloucester man. His fight with Jem Belcher took 
place at Epsom on Feb. i, 1S09. Belcher had been Champion, but was 
defeated after thirt\--one rounds, and "resigned the palm of Victory to 
Cribb, never more to enter the field of honour." Cribb was an ornament 
to the Ring and was highl\- esteemed by all noble and gentle sportsmen 
of the day. "He left the field of glory covered with honour and 
renown to pass the remainder of his days in tranquilht\- and peace, 
by papng attention to his business as a coal- merchant " — though 
later he dechned upon that inevitable last refuge of the retired pro- 
fessional, the pubhc-house. Tom, it seems, was " placid, condescending, 
and obhging, possessing great forbearance of temper." Henry Pe.\rce, 
"scientifically denominated the Game Chicken... the Broughton of his 
time and one of the most heroic and humane Champions of England, who 
not only added fresh laurels to that title but never lost that distinguished 
appellation till it was wrested from him b}- that Conqueror of Con- 
querors — Death ! "—thus the epic strain of Boxiana. The Chicken 
gained much glor%' by his heroic rescue of a woman from a burning 
house. John Gulley, Champion of England in succession to the 
Chicken, was a tall man and heavy weight, a ver\- notable fighter on 
scientific lines. "With a knowledge of the world he unites the manners 
of a weU-bred man. Unassuming and inteUigent upon aU occasions, 
this conduct has gained him respect and attention in the circles in which 
he moves ; and which are by no means of an inferior class. Thus 
proving, in himself, a Uvely instance, that All pugilists are not 
e.xcluded from poUte society-." John Jackson, "Gentleman Jackson," 
"one of the best made men in the kingdom... wisely endeavoured to 
unite with the above expression that of being one of the best behaved 
men also." He seems to have made a great impression, not only by 
his strength and science in the Ring, but by what Mr Tur\eydrop 
would have called his deportiiient. A cast of his arm was taken and 
preserved as a model of anatomical perfection. Bill Ne.\t, "a butcher 
by trade and a stout hearty blade," one of the heroes of HazUtt's first 
fight, was a Bristol man of very respectable connections. He stood 
half an inch short of sLx feet and turned the scale at thirteen stone 
seven. His first big fight was in iSiS with Oliver, whom he defeated 
in twenty-eight rounds. His hits from the shoulder had astonishing 
and peculiar force. There was some ill-feeling betT\-een Neat and the 
great Cribb, but it does not appear that they ever met in the Ring. 
Tom Hickman, "better known as the Gas-Light Man," is described 
almost h-rically by Boxiana as "a second Hotspur — impatient — fiery- 
— daring — hardy — impetuous — laughing to naught all his opponents." 
" This tremendous hero of the ' Fives ' fiist opened his peepers in search 
of chivalrous adventures in Ken Lane, Dudley, in Worcestershire, on 
the 2Sth of Januan,-. 17S5." He seems to have been a fighter from 
his cradle, and his name (like that of another fighter, Cromwell) was 
used as a word of fear to frighten smaU evil-doers into virtue. He 
stood 5ft. giin. and fought at list. 11 lbs. Many of Ifis victories 
were gained in extremeh- short times, fifteen minutes being enough for 
some of his opponents. "The Gas" seems to have had a regrettable 



236 Notes 

tendency towards boasting. Boxiana concludes his biography with a 
significant sentence. "No boxer ever had a higher opinion of his own 
powers than Hick. It should seem that he almost flatters himself 
he is INVULNERABLE." Howcver, he met his fate at the hands of 
Bill Neat on December nth, 1821, in the battle described by Hazlitt. 
Eighteen rounds settled the matter, but the Gas was really beaten by 
the ninth. As in the case of other great victories, a medal was struck 
to celebrate the event, but it is sad to relate that numismatic art 
failed to attain the ideal of pugilistic accuracy, for the combatants 
are represented as fighting on boards instead of on the grass, and are 
placed in attitudes that would give any fighting man a fit of hilarious 
contempt. The fourth volume of Boxiana devotes many pages to this 
fight. The Muse, too, was not silent. Perhaps we may quote the last 
stanza of one song: 

In eighteen rounds the Gas was spent. 

His pipes lay undefended. 
When Gas-light shares fell cent, per cent.. 

And thus the battle ended. 
The Cockney's tune was altered soon, 

In purse and spirits undone. 
As on the rack they toddled back 
With empty dies to London. 

Come Bristol boys, let's claim the bays, 
Come Daffies, spruce and clever. 
With loud Huzzas proclaim his praise. 
Sing Champion Neat for ever. 
Clies, we might observe, are pockets. 

Three other literary "fights" may be named, those in Borrow's 
Lavengro, George Meredith's Amazing Marriage and Conan Doyle's 
Rodney Stone. Borrow's hymn of praise to the "bruisers of England" 
is noticeably in the key of Hazlitt's essay. See Chapter xxvi in Lavengro. 
p. 109, 1. I. the fight's the thing. Adapted from Hamlet, Act 11, 
So. ii. 11. 633-4: 

the play's the thing 
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king, 
p. 109, 1. 6. 'the proverb' nothing 'musty.' Adapted from 
Hamlet, Act in, Sc. ii, 11. 359, etc.: "Ay sir, but, 'while the grass 
grows' — the proverb is something musty." 

p. 109, 1. 18. the Fancy. "Fancy" means, among other things, 
"preference" or "inclination." Those who have a "fancy" for dogs 
are called "dog-fanciers," for pigeons, "pigeon-fanciers," and so on. 
But chief of all the sporting "fancies" is "The Fancy," meaning the 
patrons of pugilism. 

p. 109, 1. 22. the author of Waverley. Not yet publicly known 
as Scott. " To ask at " is a Scotticism, that is, an expression that might 
be used by any Scot, including "the Author of Waverley"; but I 
cannot recall an instance of Sir Walter's actually using it in any of 
the novels. 

p. 109, 1. 24. with the authenticity, etc. Randall being the 
champion light-weight, his lady, Mrs Randall, would probably have 
authentic information about the fight. 
p. 109, 1. 31. blue ruin. Gin. 



The Fight 237 

p. no, 1. 9. Jo. Toms. Identified as Hazlitt's friend Joseph 
Parkes, a lawyer, later well known as a Radical politician. 

p. no, 1. 22. fleet the time. Adapted from As You Like It, Act i, 
Sc. i: "They say he is already in the forest of Arden;...they say 
many young gentlemen flock to him every day, and fleet the time 
carelessly as they did in the golden world" — the golden world- being 
the fabled "golden age" or "age of Saturn," in the childhood of the 
world, when life knew nothing of sin and pain. 

p. no, 1. 25. Jack Pigott. Identified as Hazlitt's friend 
P. G. Patmore, for whom see p. 174. 

p. no, 1. 30. What more felicity, etc. From Spenser's Muiopot- 
mos, or the Fate of the Buttevflie, Stanza 27. The lines are famous 
through their appearance as a sort of motto on the title page of Keats's 
first published volume, the Poems of 1817. 

p. in, 1. 5. we meet at Philippi. Adapted from Julius Caesar, 
Act IV, Sc. iii. 

p. in, 1. 6. to Piccadilly. The Bath and Bristol mails started 
from the White Horse Cellars, Piccadilly — now a restaurant. It was 
from the White Horse Cellars that Mr Pickwick and his friends started 
on their memorable visit to Bath. 

p. in, 1. 15. my Rubicon. The Rubicon was a small stream that 
flowed into the Adriatic where the modern town of Rimini stands. Its 
importance was that in the days of Caesar it formed part of the boundary 
between Cisalpine Gaul and Italia proper. To cross the Rubicon 
southwards was therefore to pass from a province into the actual terri- 
tory of Rome. Julius Caesar governed in Cisalpine Gaul, and when 
in 53 B.C., as a result of Pompey's enmity, the Senate ordered Caesar 
to disband his forces and resign his power, the great leader's reply 
was to cross the Rubicon with his army and thus to become the in- 
vader of his own country and the originator of civil war. "To cross 
the Rubicon" means therefore to take a decisive, irrevocable step. 
Hazlitt calls Hyde Park Corner his Rubicon because to pass it meant 
a resolution to continue his journey westwards out of London. Hyde 
Park Corner was regarded as the beginning of London, a popular name 
for the Duke of Wellington's residence, Apsley H )usc, which stands 
just to the east of the Park gate, being "Number One, London." 

p. in, 1. 37. I follow fate. Dryden, The Indian Emperor, Activ, 
a song at the beginning of Sc. iii: 

Ah, fading Joy, how quickly art thou past? 

Yet we thy ruin haste. 
As if the cares of human life were few. 

We seek out new. 
And follow Fate which would too fast pursue. 

p. 112, 1. 10. the Brentford Jehu. Jehu, a slang name for a 
driver; the reference being to 2 Kings ix, 20, "and the driving is 
like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi, for he driveth furiously." 
p. 112, 1.18. TomTurtle. Identified as John Thurtell (i 794-1824), 
a Norwich man, who figured largely in the sporting world, and became 
later notorious as the murderer of a gambling companion named 
Weare. He was hanged at Hertford. It was Thurtell who first taught 
boxing to the author of The Bible in Spain; and readers of Lavengro 



238 Notes 

will remember the sinister entry of Thurtell into that story and the 
forecast of his fate made in the storm by Jasper Petulengro. Thurtell 
arranged many fights and was so interested in his sport tliat shortly 
before his execution he desired to read Pierce Egan's account of the 
figlit between Spring and Langan which had just taken place. 

p. 112, 1. 38. quite chap-fallen. From Hamlet's speech about 
the skull of Yorick — Act v, Sc. i: "Where be your gibes now? your 
gambols ? your songs ? your flashes of merriment that were wont 
to set the table on a roar ? Not one now, to mock your own grinning ? 
quite chap-fallen?" "Chap-fallen" means "dejected," "dispirited," 
or literally "down in the mouth," as Yorick's skull was, the chaps 
or cheeks having disappeared and the lower jaw fallen. 

p. 113, 1. II. under the rose. " Secretly "—famiUar, too, in its 
Latin form "sub rosa." A legend relates that Cupid gave a rose to 
Harpocrates, or Horus, the god of Slence, to bribe him not to betray 
certain inconvenient secrets. 

p. 113, 1. 23. where good digestion, etc. Adapted from Macbeth, 
Act III, Sc. iv, 1. 38. 

p. 113, 1. 28. Follows so, etc. See p. 167. 

p. 113, 1. 33. coloquintida, etc. Colocynth is the dried and 
powdered medicinal herb known as "bitter apple." Aconite is the 
poisonous extract derived from the plant monkshood or wolf's bane. 
Compare Othello, Act I, Sc. iii, 1. 355: "The food that to him now is 
as luscious as locusts, shall be to him shortly as bitter as coloquintida." 
Hazlitt's bitterness has reference, no doubt, to the failure of his 
marriage. At the date of this essay divorce proceedings were being 
taken against him in the Scottish courts by his wife. 

p. 113, 1. 36. more figures. See p. 155. 

p. 114, 1. 2. an indigestion. In Hazlitt's case the result of 
excessive tea-drinking. 

p. 114, 1. 16. a foregone conclusion. See p. 221. 
p. 114, 1. 19. seriously inclined. Othello, Act i, Sc. iii, 1. 145: 
This to hear 
Would Desdemona seriously incline, 
p. 114, 1. 20. un beau jour. See p. 232. 

p. 115, 1. 2. the vein of Gilpin. There is nothing in Cowper's 
dehghtful ballad exactly like this answer. In spirit it may be likened, 
perhaps, to the following stanza, with its witty equivocation: 
I came because your horse would come. 

And, if I well forbode. 
My hat and wig will soon be here. 
They are upon the road, 
p. 115, 1. II. mum's the word. See p. 165. 
p. 115, 1. 29. A lusty man, etc. From Chaucer, Prologue to the 
Canterbiiry Tales, 1. 167: 

A monk ther was, fair for the maistrie. 

An outridere that lovede venerie ; 

A manly man, to been an abbot able. 



The Fight 239 

p. 116, 1. 5. 0£iken towel. An old slang name for a cudgel. The 
word "towelling" for a thrashing may still be heard. 

p. 116, 1. 7. he moralized, etc. From As You Like It, Act 11, 
Sc. i, 1. 44 : 

Duke. But what said Jaques, 
Did he not moralize this spectacle? 

Lord. O, yes, into a thousand similes. 

p. 1 16, 1. 8. like Bardolph's. i Henry IV, Act iii, Sc. iii, 1. 29, etc. : 

Bard. Why, you are so fat. Sir John, that you must needs be out 
of all compass, — out of all reasonable compass, Sir John. 

Fal. Do thou amend thy face, and I'll amend my life. Thou 
art our admiral, thou bearest the lantern in the poop, — but 't is in 
the nose of thee ; thou art the Knight of the Burning iLamp. 

Bard. Why, Sir John, my face does you no harm. 

Fal. No, I'll be sworn, I make as good use of it as many a man 
doth of a death's-head or a memento mori. 1 never see thy face but 
I think upon hell-fire, and Dives that lived in purple ; for there he is 
in his robes, burning, burning. If thou wert any way given to virtue, 
I would swear by thy face; my oath should be, "By this fire, that's 
God's angel." But tliou art altogether given over, and wert indeed, 
but for the light in thy face, the son of utter darkness. When thou 
rann'st up Gadshill in the night to catch my horse, if I did not think 
thou hadst been an ignis fatuus or a ball of wild-lire, there's no purchase 
in money. O, thou art a perpetual triumph, an everlasting bonfire- 
light. Thou hast saved me a thousand marks in links and torches, 
walking with thee in the night betwixt tavern and tavern : but the 
sack that thou hast drunk me would have bought me lights as good 
cheap at the dearest chandler's in Europe. I have maintained that 
salamander of yours with fire any time this two-and-thirty years; 
God reward me for it ! 

There is a further reference in Henry V, Act 11, Sc. iii. 

p. 116, I. 21. loud and furious fun. A reminiscence of Burns, 
Tarn o' Skanter : 

As Tammie glowered, amazed and curious, 
The mirth and fun grew fast and furious, 
p. 117, 1. 31. the old maxim. The most famous form of this 
saying is Danton's great utterance in 1792 when the safety of the young 
Republic of France was threatened by powerful Austrian and German 
forces: "De I'audace, encore de I'audace, toujours de I'audace, et 
la France est sauvee." 

p. 117, 1. 37. Alas, the Bristol man, etc. Cowper, The Task, 11, 
322: 

Alas ! Leviathan is not so tamed : 
Laughed at, he laughs again; and stricken hard, 
Turns to the stroke his adamantine scales. 
That feel no discipline of human hands. 

p. 118, 1.9. Achilles surveyed Hector. The great fight between 
Achilles and Hector is told in Iliad xxii. 

p. 118, 1. 30. man was made to mourn. The title and refrain 
of a poem by Burns. 



240 Notes 

p. 119, 1. 25. Between the acting, etc. Julius Caesar, Act 11, 
Sc. i, 63-65. 

p. 120, 1. 9. Ajax. Ajax or Aias, one of the Greek heroes at the 
siege of Troy, second only to Achilles in prowess. 

p. 120, 1. 13. with Atlantean shoulders. Paradise Lost, ii, ■^ob, 
part of the description of Beelzebub: 

sage he stood 
With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear 
The weight of mightiest monarchies 
— Atlas being one of the Titans, who, as Homer says, "knows the depth 
of every sea and himself upholds the tall pillars which keep earth and 
sky asunder." 

p. 120, 1. 14. Diomed. Another of the Greek heroes at the siege 
of Troy. 

p. 121, 1. II. grinned horrible. Paradise Lost, 11, 846: 
He ceased, for both seemed highly pleased, and Death 
Grinned horrible a ghastly smile, to hear 
His famine should be filled, 
p. 121, 1. 35. like two clouds. Paradise Lost, 11, 714-6. 
As when two black clouds 
With Heaven's artillery fraught, come rattling on 
Over the Caspian, then stand front to front 
Hovering a space, till winds the signal blow 
To join their dark encounter in mid air : 
So frowned the mighty combatants, that Hell 
Grew darker at their frown. 
p. 122, 1. 38. In doleful dumps. From the ballad Chevy Chase. 
p. 123, 1. 4. Sir Fopling Flutter. See p. 178. Sir Fopling is 
a foolish beau fond of dragging in French phrases on all possible 
occasions. 

p. 124, 1. 5. O procul. Vergil, Aeneid, vi, 258: 

"Procul, O procul este, profani," 
Conclamat vates, "totoque absistite luco." 
" Away, be ye gone, ye unhallowed ones," the prophetess cries, 
" and withdraw from all this sacred grove." 

p. 124, I. 5. flash-men. Rogues — coiners, thieves, etc. 
p. 124, 1. 6. Tothill Fields. A part of Westminster, 
p. 124, 1. 9. a cross. That is, not a straight fight, but one in 
which the beaten man is bribed to lose. 

p. 124, 1. 12. sans intermission. A reminiscence of ^s You Like 
It, Act II, Sc. vii, 1. 32: 

And I did laugh sans intermission 

An hour by his dial. 

p. 124, 1. 29. Mr Windham. WilUam Windham (1750-1810), 

a statesman, friend of Burke, Johnson, etc., much admired in his day. 

p. 124, 1. 37. Broughton and George Stevenson. Jack Broughton 

(1704-1789), the father of English pugilism. Broughton was very famous 

in his day as a scientific fighter, and taught the noble art in his ring at 



The Fight 241 

Hanway Street. Broughton held his own for many years, but was 
defeated at last by Slack, to the great disgust of his noble patron the 
Duke of Cumberland, hero of Culloden, who lost heavily over the fight. 
George Stevenson, the Coachman, fought Broughton when the latter was 
out of condition, Ijut Broughton was nevertheless the victor. Hazlitt's 
nice old gentleman seems to have been the kind of nice old gentleman 
often found at race meetings and similar gatherings; for as the fight 
between Broughton and "Coachee" took place in 1741 and Hazlitt 
was writing of 1821, it is hard to see how even the nicest old gentleman 
in the best state of preservation could have any clear personal recol- 
lections of a fight that had taken place eighty years before ! The 
date 1770 is quite wrong. In that year Broughton would have been 
sixty-six, hardly the age at which a man goes in the Ring. 



THE INDIAN JUGGLERS 
Essay ix in Table Talk. 

p. 126, 1. 13. past finding out._ A reminiscence of Romans xi, 33 : 

"O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God ! 

how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out." 

p. 128 1. 26. Sadler's Wells. A once famous theatre in the north 

of London, made fashionable in later years by the excellent acting of 

Samuel Phelps (i 804-1 878) in a repertory of standard plays. After 

his time the house rapidly decHned, and now no longer exists as a theatre. 

p. 128, 1. 31. Peter Pindar. See p. 178. For Opie, see p. 228. 

p. 129, 1. 31. In argument, etc. Goldsmith. The Deserted Village. 

p. 130, 1. 4. Jaggernaut. Juggernaut or Jaggernaut (Jagannath, 

meaning "lord of the world") was a Hindu god whose image was 

worshipped at Puri in Orissa. On a certain day of the year, the car 

of the image made a triumphal procession, and it is said that fanatical 

devotees used to throw themselves under the vehicle in the belief that, 

dying thus, they would at once gain entrance to paradise. 

p. 131, 1. 3. human face divine. Paradise Lost, Bk iii, 1. 44, etc., 
part of the poet's beautiful lament for his blindness: 
Thus with the year 
Seasons return; but not to me returns 
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, 
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose. 
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; 
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark 
Surrounds me. 

p. 131, 1. 18. H s and H s. One of these is probably 

Benjamin Haydon, for whom see p. 162. The other may be John 
Hoppner (1758-1810), a portrait painter of much merit, for whom, 
however, Hazlitt seems to have had little admiration. 

p. 131, I. 21. in tones and gestures hit. A reminiscence of 
Paradise Regained, iv, 255 : 

There thou shalt hear and learn the secret power 
Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit 
By voice or hand. 

s. H. 16 



242 Notes 

p. 131, 1. 22. To snatch this grace. Pope, Essay on Criticism : 
Thus Pegasus, a nearer way to take, 
May boldly deviate from the common track; 
From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part. 
And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art. 
p. 131, 1. 25. commercing -with the skies. II Penseroso, irora 
the beautiful passage in which Melancholy is personified as a "pensive 
nun, devout and pure": 

With even step and musing gait. 
And looks commercing with the skies. 
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes, 
p. 132, 1, 10. And visions, etc. The immediate source of this 
quotation is a letter from Gray to Wal pole (September 1737) describing 
Burnham Beeches — a beauty spot of which Gray may be called the 
discoverer: "My comfort amidst all this is, that I have at the distance 
of half-a-mile, through a green lane, a forest (the vulgar call it a common) 
all my own, at least as good as so, for I spy no human thing 
in it but myself. It is a little chaos of mountains and precipices; 
mountains, it is true, that do not ascend much above the clouds, 
nor are the declivities quite so amazing as Dover cliff; but just such 
hills as people who love their necks as well as I do may venture to climb, 
and crags that give the eye as much pleasure as if they were more 
dangerous. Both vale and hill are covered with most venerable 
beeches, and other very reverend vegetables, that, like most other 
ancient people, are always dreaming out their old stories to the winds. 
And as they bow their hoary tops relate, 
In murm'ring sounds, the dark decrees of fate; 
While visions, as poetic eyes avow. 
Cling to each leaf, and swarm on every bough. 
At the foot of one of these, squats Me I (il penseroso), and there grow 
to the trunk for a whole morning. The timorous hare and sportive 
squirrel gambol around me like Adam in Paradise, before he had an 
Eve; but I think he did not use to read Vergil as I commonly do 
there." The verses seem to be adapted by Gray from Aeneid, vi, 282- 
284 which William Morris thus translates : 

But in the midst a mighty elm, dusk as the night, outspread 
Its immemorial boughs and limbs, where lying dreams there lurk. 
As tells the tale, still clinging close 'neath every leaf-side mirk, 
p. 132, 1. 20. Thrills in each nerve. Possibly a reminiscence 
of Addison's poem Milton's Style imitated in a Translation of a Story 
out of the Aeneid — the story of Polyphemus: 

we stood 
Amazed, be sure; a sudden horror chill 
Ran through each nerve, and thrilled in every vein. 
Till, using all the force of winds and oars. 
We sped away. 
p. 132, 1. 38. half flying, half on foot. Paradise Lost, 11, 941-2: 
nigh-foundered, on he fares. 
Treading the rude consistence, half on foot. 
Half flying, 
p. 133, 1. 13. I kno'nr an individual. Leigh Hunt. 



The Indian Jugglers 243 

p. 133, 1. 22. nagsB canorea. "Tuneful trifles," quoted from 
Horace On the Art of Poetry. 

p. 133, 1. 23. Rochester. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647- 
1680), a courtier of Charles II's reign. Rochester wrote many love poems 
and satires in verse, but possibly his best remembered piece is the 
witty epitaph on Charles II : 

Here hes our Sovereign Lord the King, 

Whose word no man reUes on. 
Who never said a foolish thing 
Nor ever did a wise one. 
To which the " merry " monarch was said to have replied that his words 
were certainly his own, but his deeds were the work of his Ministers. 

p. 133, 1. 23. Surrey. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547), 
a brave and gifted member of a noble family, was executed by Henry 
VIII on a ridiculous charge of high treason. He wrote many pleasant 
poems and was the first to use blank verse and the sonnet in English. 

p. 133, 1. 37. Themistocles said. Themistocles (525-459 B.C.), 
the famous statesman and soldier of Athens, whose belief in sea power 
was justified by the great victory over the Persian fleet at Salamis 
(480). Plutarch's life of Themistocles records that, "when in company 
where people engaged themselves in what are commonly thought 
the liberal and elegant amusements, he was obliged to defend himself 
against the observations of those who considered themselves highly 
accomplished, by the somewhat arrogant retort, that he certainly 
could not make use of any stringed instrument, his only accomplish- 
ment being the ability so to govern a small and obscure city as to 
make it great and glorious." 

p. 135, 1. 2. Jedidiah Buxton. Buxton (1707-1772), the son 
of a Derbyshire schoolmaster, possessed an altogether abnormal power 
of mental calculation, but was otherwise illiterate and unteachable. 
He is said to have worked out the value of a farthing continuously 
doubled for 139 times and then to have squared the number of 
pounds in this product. The results, tested by logarithms, appeared to 
be correct. He was taken to see Garrick in Richard III and paid no 
attention to the piece, his mind being occupied in counting the number 
of words spoken by the actors. See Tahls Talk : On Genius and 
Common-sense {II) for a much fuller reference to Jedidiah Buxton. 

p. 135, 1. 3. Napier's bones. John Napier of Merchiston (1550- 
1617), a Scottish baron and a wise investigator in many branches of 
human knowledge, is most famous as the inventor of logarithms. 
"Napier's bones" was a piece of apparatus for calculations — not 
unlike the modern slide-rule. Hazlitt's sentence took its form, 
no doubt, as a reminiscence of Ezekiel xxxvii, 3: "Son of man, can 
these bones live?" 

p. 135, 1. 14. A great chess-player. Probably Hazlitt was 
thinking of Sarratt whom he describes in the essay On Coffee-Hoiise 
Politicians (Table Talk). 

p. 135, 1. 20. he dies, etc. Twelfth Night, Act i, Sc. 5 : 
Lady, you are the cruellest she alive 
If you will lead these graces to the grave 
And leave the world no copy. 



244 Notes 

p. 135, 1. 27. John Hunter. A very famous surgeon (1728-1793). 
His great collection of specimens was purchased after his death and 
forms the nucleus of the museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in 
Lincoln's Inn Fields. 

p. 135, 1. 34. Sir Humphry Davy. Davy (1778-1829) was born 
at Penzance and showed early his bent for science. He became famous 
for his researches in chemistry and electricity, liis discoveries including 
the isolation of such important elements as sodium, potassium and 
calcium. He is most widely known, however, for his investigations 
into fire-damp in coal mines and the consequent invention of the 
Davy safety-lamp. Davy was famous as a lecturer, and in his youth 
was one of the early admirers of Wordsworth and Coleridge, whom he 
assisted by supervising the proof-sheets of Lyrical Ballads, Vol. 11. 
Hazlitt's disparagement of Davy sounds rather foolish now. 

p. 136, 1. 5. a ' great scholar's memory,' etc. A reminiscence 
of Hamlet iii, ii : "O heavens! die two months ago and not forgotten 
yet? Then there's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life 
half-a-year." 

p. 137, 1. 7. The Roman poet said. Horace, Odes in, i, 1. 40. 
The original Latin is, "Post equitem sedet atra cura." 

p. 137, 1. 12. domestic treason, etc. Macbeth, Act iii, Sc. ii, 1. 25. 
Duncan is in his grave; 

After life's fitful fever he sleeps well; 

Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison. 

Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing 

Can touch him further, 
"in the instant," a line above, is another echo of Macbeth: 

Thy letters have transported me beyond 

This ignorant present, and I feel now 

The future in the instant. (Act i, Sc. v. 1. 59.) 

p. 137, 1. 30. a great orator. Possibly Pitt. 

p. 138, 1. 5. Mr Brougham's speeches. Henry Brougham, 
afterwards Lord Brougham and Vaux (1778-1868), was once very 
famous as a Whig statesman, orator and writer. He undoubtedly 
did much good in advancing the cause of popular education, but he 
concerned himself with so many things and wrote so much on all sorts 
of subjects, that his genuine force was dissipated rather than wisely 
used. He became Lord Chancellor in 1830, a promotion that provoked 
O'Connell's gibe, "It's a pity Brougham doesn't know a little law, 
for then he would know a little of everything." Brougham's restless 
activities are constantly satirised by Peacock, who calls him "the 
learned friend," or, more openly, "Sir Guy de Vaux." See Crotchet 
Castle and Gryll Grange. A vivacious account of him will be found 
in Bagehot's Biographical Studies and another in Hazlitt's The Spirit 
of the Age. 

p. 138, 1. 5. Mr Canning's wit. George Canning (1770-1827) 
showed his brilUant gifts very early in his contributions to The Micro- 
cosm, an Eton periodical of the moment, and later in pieces written 
for The Anti- Jacobin, a famous sheet that attacked the French Revolu- 
tion and its defenders with the weapons of humour and satire. The 



The Indian Jugglers 245 

delightful Needy Knife-Grinder is the best known of his lighter 
verses, a more serious piece being the address to Pitt as "The Pilot 
who weathered the Storm." Canning imported his brilliance into 
Parliamentary speeches. He supported Pitt's war policy and served 
in that statesman's ministries. He was an efficient Minister for 
Foreign Affairs during many critical years of the Napoleonic wars, 
as well as at a later period. He died shortly after becoming Prime 
Minister. A statesman of this sort was naturally not very acceptable 
to a Revolutionist Uke HazUtt. See however the "Character of Can- 
ning" contributed to The Examiner and reprinted in some editions of 
The Spirit of the Age. 

p. 138, 1. 6. Foul like the Quarterly. The Quarterly Review, 
a Tory periodical founded in 1809 in opposition to the Whig Edinburgh, 
gained a very unsavoury reputation for the foulness of its attacks on 
many famous writers during the editorship of William Gifford (1757- 
1826), successively cabin-boy, shoemaker's apprentice and man of 
letters. Keats, Hunt, Hazlitt and Lamb were among the notable 
victims of The Quarterly, the attack on Keats being specially disgraceful. 
See Hazlitt's A Letter to William Gifford, Esq. and the sketch of Gifford 
in The Spirit of the Age. 

p. 138, 1. 6. the Edinburgh Review. This famous Whig 
periodical was started in 1802 with a brilliant band of contributors 
including Brougham, Sydney Smith, Francis Jeffrey and Francis 
Horner. Scott was among the early contributors, Hazlitt and Macaulay 
among the later ones. See Bagehot's essay The First Edinburgh 
Reviewers. A "let" ball is a hindered or obstructed ball — e.g. in 
lawn tennis, one that touches the top of the net in passing over and 
has to be served again. Hazlitt seems to imply that The Edinburgh 
Review was not direct and decided enough. For Hazlitt on Jeffrey, 
see The Spirit of the Age. 

p. 138, 1. 27. the Rosemary Bra^ich. Once a well-known pleasure 
resort and music hall in Southampton 'Street, Camberwell, and now 
an ordinary public house. Copenhagen House mentioned lower down 
was a very famous resort in North London. It was pulled down about 
1851-55. The Metropolitan Cattle Market (The Caledonian Market) 
stands on its site. 

p. 139, 1. II. Goldsmith. HazUtt refers to this more explicitly 
in his essay "On Envy" (Plain Speaker). "Goldsmith was jealous 
even of beauty in the other sex. When the people at Amsterdam 
gathered round the balcony to look at the Miss Hornecks, he grew 
impatient, and said peevishly, 'There are places where I also am 
admired.'" There is still another reference in the essay "On Living 
to One's-self" (Table Talk). Boswell tells the story under date 1763 
of his Johnson, and no doubt the general currency of the anecdote 
derives from Boswell as its source. It is very obvious, however, that 
Boswell the Scotsman utterly misunderstood and depreciated the 
Irishman Goldsmith in almost every respect, and certainly in this 
particular instance; for Mrs Gwyn, "the Jessamy Bride" herself, 
declared that Goldsmith's remark was merely a playful jest and that 
she was shocked at seeing it adduced as a proof of his envious 
disposition. 

16-3 



246 Notes 

p. 139, 1.22. Lord Castlereagh's face. Robert Stewart, Viscount 
Castlereagh (1769-1822), was the Tory Foreign Minister during part 
of the Napoleonic war. He stood in the popular mind for harsh and 
repressive government and was therefore greatly hated. Lord Castle- 
reagh was a man of handsome appearance, and Hazlitt admits more 
than once, with almost unwilling admiration, the detested minister's 
good looks. Castlereagh committed suicide. 

p. 139, 1. 23. Mr Croker. John Wilson Croker (1780-1857), Tory 
secretary to the Admiralty for many years, and prolific writer in The 
Quarterly Review. He is now familiar as the object of Macaulay's dislike 
and as the original of Rigby, the venal politician in Disraeli's Coningsby. 

p. 139, 1. 27. Mr Murray. John Murray (i 778-1 843), head of 
the famous publishing house in Albemarle Street, lives in literary 
history for his connection with The Quarterly Review and his long 
association with Byron. 

p. 139, 1. 29. Hungerford Stairs. Where Charing Cross Railway 
Bridge (north end) now stands. 

p. 140, 1. 8. the Fleet or King's Bench. Two famous debtors' 
prisons, the King's Bench in the Borough, Southwark, and the Fleet 
in Farringdon Street, where the Memoi-ial Hall now stands. Both 
prisons have been immortalised by Dickens — the King's Bench in 
David Copperfield as the home of Mr Micawber during a period of 
financial embarrassment more acute than usual, and the Fleet as the 
scene of Mr Pickwick's incarceration at the instance of Messrs Dodson 
and Fogg after the case of Bardell v. Pickwick. Games like fives and 
racquets were almost the only out-door exercises possible for the 
prisoners or "Collegians" as Mr Dorrit preferred to call them. 

p. 140, 1. 20. Mr Manners Sutton. He became Speaker in 1817. 

p. 140, 1. 25. Let no rude hand, etc. Adapted from Wordsworth's 
Ellen Irwin : 

By Ellen's side the Bruce is laid; 
And, for the stone upon his head. 
May no rude hand deface it. 
And its forlorn "Hie jacet." 
"Hie jacet" means "here lies." 



ON GOING A JOURNEY 

From Table Talk, Essay xix. First published in The New Monthly 
Magazine, 1822. 

p. 141, 1. 4. never less alone. Quoted in Cicero, De Officiis, 
Bk III, I, as a saying attributed to Scipio Africanus : "P. Scipionem, 
...eum, qui primus Africanus appellatus est, dicere solitum scripsit 
Cato...'Nunquam se minus otiosuni esse quam quum otiosus, nee 
minus solum quam quum solus esset'" — "It is related by Cato that 
P. Scipio — he who was first distinguished by the title of Africanus — 
was accustomed to say that he was never less at leisure than in his 
leisure and never less alone than when alone." Swift, in his Essay 
on the Faculties of Mankind, writes "A wise man is never less alone 



On going a Journey 247 

than when alone." Compare, too, Byron, Childe Harold, Canto iii, 
St. xc. : 

Then stirs the feeUng infinite, so felt 
In sohtude, when we are least alone. 
p. 141, 1. 5. The fields his study. Bloomfield (1766-1823), 
The Farmer's Boy, Spring, 1. 31 : 

Strange to the world, he wore a bashful look. 
The fields his study, Nature was his book, 
p. 141, 1. 15. a friend in my retreat. Cowper, Retirement: 
I praise the Frenchman — his remark was shrewd — 
How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude! 
But grant me still a friend in my retreat 
Whom I may whisper solitude is sweet. 
" The Frenchman " is La Bruyere (1645-96), famous author of Characters. 
p. 141, 1. 23. May plume her feathers, etc. Milton, Comits, 
378-80 : 

And Wisdom's self 
Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude ; 
Where, with her best nurse. Contemplation, 
She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings, 
That in the various bustle of resort 
Were all to-ruffled and sometimes impaired, 
p. 141, 1. 28. a Tilbury. A kind of gig holding two persons; like 
the "hansom " it was named from the maker or designer. 

p. 142, 1. 7. sunken wrack. Henry V, Act i, Sc. ii, 1. 165 : 
And make her chronicle as rich with praise 
As is the ooze and bottom of the sea 
With sunken wrack and sumless treasuries, 
p. 142,1. 14. Leave, oh, leave me to my repose. The closing line 
of certain stanzas in Gray's Descent of Odin — a conversation between 
Odin and the Earth-Spirit, exactly like the conversation between 
Wotan and Erda in Act iii of Wagner's Siegfried. The goddess, 
questioned by Odin, murmurs her answer, and adds : 
Unwilling I my lips unclose: 
Leave me, leave me to repose. 
p. 142, 1. 16. very stuff of the conscience. Othello, Act i, Sc. ii, 
1. 2 : 

Though in the trade of war I have slain men. 
Yet do I hold it very stufif o' the conscience 
To do no contrived murder. 
p. 142, 1. 28. Out upon such half-faced fellowship, i Henrv IV, 
Act I, Sc. iii, 1. 208. 

p. 142, 1. 32. an observation of Mr Cobbett's. For Cobbett 
see p. 165. 

p. 143, 1. 36. give it an understanding. Hamlet, Act i, Sc. ii, 
1. 250: 

If you have hitherto concealed the sight 
Let it be tenable in your silence still ; 
And whatsoever else shall hap to-night. 
Give it an understanding, but no tongue. 



248 Notes 

p. 143, 1. 37. My old friend G . Coleridge. See the essay 

My First Acquaintance with Poets. 

p. 143, 1. 40. far above singing. Beaumont and Fletcher, 
Phi last er, Act v, Sc. v : 

You left a kiss 
Upon these lips then, which I mean to keep 
From you for ever. I did hear you talk 
Far above singing! 
p. 144, 1. 4. Allfoxden. See p. 160. 

p. 14.}, 1. 5. that fine madness. A reminiscence of Drayton's 
Elegy To my dearly loved friend Henry Reynolds, Esqr., Of Poets 
and Poesy : 

Neat Marlowe bathed in the Thespian springs 
Had in him those brave translunary things 
That the first poets had ; his raptures were 
All air and fire which made his verses clear. 
For that fine madness still he did retain 
Which rightly should possess a poet's brain, 
p. 144, 1. 19. the boy Endymion. The reader will perhaps 
hardly need to be reminded that the story of "pale Phoebe's" love 
for the Latmian shepherd Endymion has been told for all time by 
Keats in the first of his longer poems. The pictures of Endymion 
and Diana by Watts will be familiar to many. 

p. 144, 1. 26. The Faithful Shepherdess. A delightful pastoral 
play by John Fletcher (1579-1625), the surviving dramatist of the 
famous partnership. 

p. 144, 1. 33. L . Lamb. 

p. 145, 1. 3. to ' take one's ease,' etc. i Henry IV, Act iii, Sc. iii, 
1. 92, etc. : "What, shall I not take mine ease in mine inn but I shall 
have my pocket picked ? " 

p. 145, 1. 10. The cups that cheer. Cowper, The Task, Bk iv: 
Now stir the fire and close the shutters fast. 
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, 
And while the bubbling and loud hissing urn 
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups, 
That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each. 
So let us welcome peaceful evening in. 
Cowper's Task was published in 1784. Forty years earlier had 
appeared Berkeley's Siris, a remarkable little book recommending 
tar water as a cure for all diseases. Readers of Great Expectations 
will remember the famous occasion when Pip mixed this household 
remedy with the brandy. In section 217 of Siris, Berkeley contrasts 
the beneficent action of tar-water with that of fermented spirits, and 
says that the nature of tar is "so mild and benign and proportioned to 
the human constitution, as to warm without heating, to cheer but not 
inebriate, and to produce a calm and steady joy like the effect of good 
news." 

p. 145, 1. 13. Sancho...once fixed upon cow-heel. See Don 
Quixote, Part II, Chapter xlix ; but the circumstances were not the 



On going a Journey 249 

same. Sancho was not at an inn ; he was exercising his governorship 
of Barataria, and had undergone some trjring disappointments in the 
matter of food. 

p. 145, 1. 16. Shandean contemplation. A reference to Sterne's 
ever delightful Tristram Shandy ; but it is not clear in what sense 
Hazlitt uses the word. He may mean "genial" with reference to the 
prevaiHng geniality of the book, or "informal," with reference to the 
rapid flitting from topic to topic characteristic of Sterne's apparently 
artless art. 

p. 145, 1. 37. unhoused free condition. Othello, Act i, Sc. ii, 1. 26 : 
For know, lago. 
But that I love the gentle Desdemona, 
I would not my unhoused free condition 
Put into circumspection and confine 
For the sea's worth. 

p. 145, 1. 39. lord of one's self. Dryden, Epistle to my Honour'd 
Kinsman, John Driden : 

Promoting Concord, and composing Strife, 
Lord of yourself, uncumber'd with a wife. 

p. 146,1. 19. as once at Witham Common. Witham Common 
is in Somerset. Hazlitt's philosoplucal problem is referred to more 
fully in the first essay (p. 19). 

p. 146, 1. 23. Gribelin's engravings of the Cartoons. Simon 
Gribehn (1611-1733), a French engraver who lived in England for many 
years, engraved the Cartoons of Raphael (see p. 171) but on a very 
small scale. The set of prints was published in 1707. 

p. 146, 1. 25. Westall's drawings. Richard Westall, R.A. (1765- 
1836), an artist of the English School, was much admired for his illus- 
trations to the works of several poets. The National Gallery, The 
Wallace Collection and South K^ensington Museum all possess examples 
of his art. There are many references to this once popular painter in 
Hazlitt's works, especially in Conversations of Northcote. Hazlitt did 
not admire lum and posterity has confirmed that judgment. 

p. 146, 1. 32. at Bridgw^ater. See the essay My First Acquaintance 
with Poets, where the reading of Paul and Virginia is placed at 
Tewkesbury. 

p. 146, 1. 34. Madame D'Arblay's Camilla. See p. 160. 

p. 146, 1.36. the Ne'w Eloise. Seep. 167. It should be noted that 
Rousseau was one of the first to dwell in literature upon the sublime 
beauty of mountain scenery, which, up to his time, had been regarded 
by all polite people with sentiments of disgust and horror. The reference 
in the text is to one such passage — the letter describing the excursion 
on the water. Part iv, Letter 17, St Preux to Milord Edouard. The 
loth of April was HazUtt's birthday. 

p. 146, 1. 40. bonne bouche. Hazlitt incorrectly wrote bon bouche. 

p. 147, 1. 7. green upland swells, etc. For this passage see p. 160. 



250 Notes 

p. 147, 1. 18. the light of common day. Wordsworth, Ode on 
the Intimations of Immortality , etc. : 

The Youth, who daily farther from the east 
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, 
And by the vision splendid 
Is on his way attended ; 
At length the Man perceives it die away, 
And fade into the light of common day. 
p. 147, 1. 20. The beautiful is vanished and returns not. 
Coleridge, Death of Wallenstein (translated from Schiller), Act v, 
Sc. i, 1. 68: 

The bloom is vanished from my life. 
For O! he stood beside me, like my youth, 
Transformed for me the real to a dream, 
Clothing the palpable and the familiar 
With golden exhalations of the dawn. 
Whatever fortunes wait my future toil. 
The beautiful is vanished — and returns not. 
p. 147, 1. 31. O sylvan Dee. A reminiscence of Wordsworth's 
Tintern Abbey lines, 1. 56: 

How oft in spirit have I turned to thee 
O sylvan Wye I thou wanderer through the woods. 
The rest of the sentence is, no doubt, a mingled reminiscence of Revela- 
tion xxii, I, and xxi, 6: "And he shewed me a pure river of water 
of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and the 
Lamb"; and, "I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain 
of the water of life freely." 

p. 148, 1. 6. The landscape bares its bosom. A reminiscence 
of Wordsworth's sonnet The world is too much with 11s : 
Tliis Sea that bares lier bosom to the moon; 
The winds that will be howling at all hours. 
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; 
For this, for everything, we are out of tune; 
It moves us not. 
p. 148, 1. 15. Beyond Hyde Park, etc. For Etherege and his plays 
see p. 178. The sentiment, however, is not uttered by Sir Fopling 
Flutter himself: 

Dorimant. To be with you I could live there [i.e. in the country] 
and never send one thought to London. 

Harriet. Whate'er you say, I know all beyond Hyde Park's a 
desert to you, and that no gallantry can draw you further. 

p. 149, 1. 14. The nciind is its own place. Paradise Lost, i, 254 : 
The mind is its own place, and in itself 
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven, 
p. 149, 1. 17. I once took a party to Oxford. Charles and Mary 
Lamb. See the second essay On the Conversation of Authors. 
p. 149, 1. 19. With glistering spires. Paradise Lost, 11, 550: 
or some renown'd metropolis 
With glistering spires and pinnacles adorned. 



On going a Journey 251 

p. 149, 1. 22. at Blenheim, See p. 223. 

p. 149, 1. 23. powdered Cicerone. A footman. A cicerone 
(Italian, pronounced in four syllables with the c's like ch, pi. ciceroni) 
is a guide who accompanies travellers to show them the beauties or 
antiquities of a place. 

p. 150, 1. 2. when I first set my foot, etc. Hazlitt first visited 
France in 1802 when his idol, Napoleon, was governing as First Consul. 
In 1822, the date of this essay, Napoleon was dead in exile, and the 
French people bore contentedly the yoke of the Bourbons whom they 
had once dethroned. Hence Hazlitt's scornful allusions lower down. 

p. 150, 1. 26. Dr Johnson remarked. See Boswell, under date 
1778: "How little does travelling supply to the conversation of any 
man who has travelled." Modern readers may possibly dissent from 
Johnson's pronouncement on this point. "Travellers' tales" have 
now become proverbial for unveracity — and dullness. 



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